The Case of the Drowning Men (2 page)

Scientists
say
one of
the
things
the
human
brain
i
s
very
quick to
detect
is
a
pattern
.
If so, t
hat must be the reason why,
when I
glanced at
the
February
article concerning yet another youth who had wandered away
from his buddies
and
whose corpse
was
found
shortly
thereafter
floating
in the Mississippi, I blurted aloud, “What
,
n
ot again,” and clicked on the news link.
Before that
day
, before I
began to
consciously
pay attention to this issue
, I
can honestly say I
’
d
never
known
of
any
one
,
young
or
old
,
male or female,
to
drink and drown
in
autumn
,
winter
or spring
.
Not
in all the time I’ve
lived
in this
, the affected area
.

L
ike
my fellow
citizens
who
are
also
lifelong
residents of
th
e Great Lakes
region
—
growing up
here, going to school, working,
vacationing,
socializing
—
I can attest that
the
se
two
things
,
drinking and drowning
in
cold weather
,
have never been
synonymous
with each other
.
D
rowning after a night out
on the town
with your friends
during the
chilly
months of
September through April
, with
no
body else around to help, with no
witness
es
,
just
isn’t
as inevitable as the
police
would have
us
all
suddenly
believe
it is
.
It’s not
, regardless
of
what age you are
or
your
close proximity to
the
water
,
an
ordinary
way to perish
.

Th
i
s
is
probably
because
in these parts,
even
when
people are
drunk out of their minds,
they
don’t usually
drown outdoors
unless they’re
in the act of swimming
,
or else
involved in some
other
form of
water recreation
like waterskiing or boating
.
A
ctivities
which
, because of
our
cold,
northern climate,
are
only
safely
executed
in rivers, lakes and ponds
approximately
three months out of the
calendar
year
, in
June
,
July
, and
August.

The
rest of th
e
time
the water’s
simply too cold to
go
in
, and
most every
body
(
native and transplant alike
)
understands
that
if water is
at or
below
65
degrees Fahrenheit,
it’s not only
brutally
uncomfortable, it can kill
you
—a
body cools in water twice as fast as
it does
in air
,
losing
an approximate rate of five degrees per hour. D
eath from hypothermia
only
takes
about
three hours
in
40 to 60
degree
water
;
less than two hours at 35 to 40 degrees; and less than three-quarters of an hour
at temperatures
below 35 degrees.

Those deadly equations are
fairly
easy to master and
,
in the land of lakes and rivers and ponds and streams and brooks
,
youngsters
are
taught them early on
. As for
the
rare
and reckless
few who
fail to
grasp the
math
,
to be
perfectly candid
,
they don’t usually make it to their early teens, let alone full adulthood.

The average age of the
males
who go
missing and
are
later
found drowned
in
the I
nterstate
9
0
and
9
4
C
orridor
is between
19
and
23
years.
In the entire grouping
p
erhaps a
handful
have been
only 17
and
a few
others
as old as
30
,
al
though
it must be said
,
in the case of
the
more mature
victims
, they
didn’t look
anywhere near
th
eir true
age in
posters
or
photographs
.

Grown men drowning in
cold weather
on their way home at night
.
That’s
become
a
strange new
fact of life
and the weird new
math
those who
reside in
the northern corridor have
now
had to learn, based
up
on figures
which
have been accumulating for nearly
the past
two decades.

We’re
fond of
and rely on
facts and numbers
to inform us
here in the northland because
, overall,
we’re
an educated people. Our extensive waterways, highways, railways, large cities
, major industries
and fertile farmlands have contributed to make the region one of the most affluent in the country. As a result,
many
of the
world’s
finest
universities
can be
found in this region
as well,
and an overwhelming majority of us have attended them
. We’re
a
school
ed
and
highly
trained
bunch of
skeptic
s
we are,
and even a bit conservative
leaning
. Which is to say, we
tend to
mull things over
long
before we act
.
W
e don’t jump to conclusions…

In 2004 the
April
drowning of
yet
another
popular, athletic
,
and
bright
21
-
year-old
male
of medium build
,
at
the University of Wisconsin
in
La Crosse
,
provid
ed
the tipping point
for
th
at
community’s
stoical
tolerance
of
the
matter
.
In terms of
these
events
La Crosse
is
one of the
hotspots
,
and
by
that year
t
here
’
d been
way
too many
of the same type of men dying
under
identical
circumstances
for
the public
to
view it
anymore
a
s
coincidence
.
With the
inexplicable
disappearance of honor student Jared Dion
the city was up in arms
,
and
when his body was eventually discovered downriver,
the once-whispered
suspicions
of murder
instantly
morphed into
full blown
allegations of a serial killer or
a
gang of serial
kill
er
s
stalking college
-
age
men
in the area
,
not to mention
accusations
of
police
involvement and a
cover
up.

T
here were roughly
5
1
,000 people living in La Crosse in 2004,
according to the U.S. Census,
and
, to be sure,
they weren’t all
hapless
students; c
ity
officials and the police department
were l
ate to
acknowledge
a
crisis
at hand
,
and,
when they did finally react
to it
,
the
town
-
hall
meetings
they
commandeered
to
dismiss
the
public’s
fears
as unfounded
did
little or
nothing to
calm things down again
.
E
very public debate
concerning
the
river deaths
was jam-packed and
rapidly
descended
into a shouting match.

It was
probably
in a
last ditch
effort to restore
the peace
as well as to mitigate
harm
to the
university’s
reputation
that
an
open letter
from faculty
members
at the University of Wisconsin
in
La Crosse was
penned
and
then
distributed
to the student body
.
Co-authored by the Chairs of the Psychology and Sociology departments and titled
Why we are 99.9% sure it is NOT a serial killer - a data based explanation
,
this urgent communiqué
implored students
to
u
se
their
“
critical thinking skills
”
to evaluate what was really going on
in their town
.
A levelheaded analysis would prove these were
only
drowning
s
, not murders,
the professors assured
them
.
A
string of terribly tragic and utterly preventable accidents
: