Did Police in La Crosse, Wisconsin Cover Up a Serial Killer?

here at the lodge we're beginning to notice a pattern in regards to police incompetency when it comes to missing persons cases the pattern is that it's very consistent I'm Aiden Mattis and welcome back to the [Music] LA the United States of America has a lot of very well-known cities New York City for example is known as the Big Apple for some reason Philadelphia is the Cradle of Liberty Chicago is home of things they call Pizza but what the city of Lacrosse Wisconsin is well known for is unfortunately the frequency of alcohol rated drownings in its Mississippi River waterfront home to over 50,000 people including 20,000 students of the University of Wisconsin at lacrosse the turbo University and Western Technical College the city was originally settled by a fur Trader named Nathan Myrick and prior to that it was an uninhabited Prairie and Hooch chunk territory now if you're new to the channel and curious about why I mentioned the whole Hooch chunk thing one aspect of lur Lodge videos is that we have a little history segment in before most of our missing persons cases this is no different but if you're not interested in that history segment feel free to skip it using the scrubber bar which can tell you where all of the chapters of the video are and speaking of the scrubber bar I wanted to talk to you about our partner for today's video fume who can help you scrub out bad habits fume takes the approach that not every part of a bad habit is necessarily bad for you so rather than completely changing the way you live your life life why not just take the bad part out of the Habit you already have and fume is an Innovative award-winning flavored air device that does just that instead of electronics fume is completely natural instead of vapor fume just uses flavored air and instead of harmful chemicals fume uses all natural delicious flavors it's very simple instead of being bad fume is good it's a habit that you're free to enjoy and it makes replacing your bad habit a lot easier and it does that by filling the void in a guilt-free natural way your fume comes with an adjustable air flow dial and is even built in with adjustable parts and magnets for fidgeting while you enjoy your habit breaking activities personally my favorite thing about the device is the weight and the feel the fact that it's got real wood it's got a metal tip and it actually just feels nice in your hand you can hold it you can suck on it and if you hang out with a group of people who are still practicing a certain bad habit then you know what you don't have to feel left out stopping is something we all put off because it's hard but switching to fume is easy enjoyable and even fun fume is served over over 150,000 customers and has thousands of success stories and there's no reason that you can't be one of them join fume in accelerating Humanity's breakup from destructive Habits by picking up the journey pack today head to trif nume.com lorod or scan the QR code and use code lur Lodge to get 10% off your purchase of the journey pack today if you're looking for an upgrade over the journey pack the fume Solano launched on November 6th with the Solano you can enjoy the premium Walnut barrel and Onyx Black coated mouthpiece that has a smoother finish and still get 10% off if you're interested in giving fume a try head to trif nume.com Lor Lodge or scan the QR code and use code lur Lodge to get 10% off your order today but now that we're through talking about bad habits I want to talk about a good habit and that's learning history in this case that is the history of the hooch chunk a western suin speaking people who inhabited much of what is now Wisconsin as with most Native American cultures the way that we know where they came from and how they came to be is through oral tradition combined with a little bit of archaeology in the oral tradition of the hunk they descend from the onota culture who themselves sprung up around 900 at the end of the late Woodland period the hunk were also known by the poaty and Algonquin speaking culture as the Winnebago and this term Winnebago is how the French explorers who first encountered the hunk in the 17th century would have first known them and while hunk tradition does have them tracing their lineage back to the onota there are other theories out there some suggest that they migrated from the East Coast While others claim a descent from actually Southern peoples one Hooch chunk story that I find particularly interesting involves the people wishing for greater hunting grounds so the great spirit sends them a water spirit and this being goes and finds a cold land of snow and ice and using its own warmth as well as its physical being carves out the snow and creates the lakes and rivers that we now know of in Wisconsin and this could very well suggest an oral historical tradition that goes all the way back to the last glacial period over 10,000 years ago at the time of first contact with Europeans however the hooch chunk were a semi-nomadic people living off of a mix of hunting and Gathering as well as small scale subsistence Agriculture and much like the anishinabe cultures that bordered them such as the ojibway the Ottawa and the pamy they had a animal-based clan system to which all of their civic responsibilities were attached there were 12 of these Clans which were further divided into clans of the sky and clans of the Earth the sky oriented clans were the eagle Hawk pigeon and Thunderbird Clans whereas the earth-based clans were bear wolf water spirit deer elk buffalo fish and snake and unfortunately I was not able to find specifics on what all of the clans were responsible for I was able to find that for our Nish AB culture video but not here in addition to these Civic divisions in responsibility gender also played a role women were mostly responsible for gathering for medicinal stuff and domestic activities men on the other hand were primarily Hunters Warriors and Artisans the Ho Chunk were also extraordinarily careful about incest ensuring that nobody from the same Clan married someone of their Clan even going further as to suggest that earth-based Clans marry into Sky based Clans and vice versa and while we don't know a ton about Hooch chunk history we do know that sometime in the 16th century ojibway expansion to the South forced them to move South themselves this Sudden Change in the amount of available hunting ground led to a further split in the hooch chunk Society which actually gave us the Iowa the Missoura and the uh oo yes it's the Oto then in 1634 the first Contact between Europeans and the hooch chunk was made by a French explorer by the name of Jean Nicolet it also may be nicolay but as far as French is concerned if you don't want me to pronounce the letter don't put it there nicolay encountered the Ho Chunk near what is present day Green Bay Wisconsin and he recorded there were about 5,000 Warriors present when he was being entertained by the tribe considering that essentially every man within Hooch chunk Society was a warrior this puts the total number of hunk at around 15 to 20,000 individuals however by the time that more explorers were getting out there and encountering the Ho Chunk in the 1650s they found that the population had been drastically reduced partially by disease and partially by War the population may have fallen as low as just 500 people but over the course of the past two centuries the hooch chunk have regained a sizable portion of their population reaching about 12,000 individuals in the United States and Canada today back in 1827 however Americans first began to encroach upon Taho chunk territory now if you asked them back then they would have argued that it was American land that had been granted to them by the British in 1783 after the end of the Revolutionary War if you were to ask the hunk they obviously would disagree now while the vast majority of the hunk people saw a peaceful resolution to what was a growing conflict of interest a small number did decide to take up arms and attack American settlers in the region particularly lead Miners and some homesteaders several settler families were killed leading to an American Military show of force and eventually the forc cessation of the lead mining territory to the American government then a few years later during the Blackhawk war of 1832 hunk took up arms on both sides fighting for both a native Coalition under Chief Blackhawk of the souk as well as for the Americans likely hoping that by fighting for the Americans they would receive favorable treatment that was not to be as in the aftermath of Blackhawk loss the Americans kind of collectively punished all of the natives who were involved whether the majority of their population approved or not following the resolution of the war and the seizure of much of the territory by the American government the hochun faced several removals but they kept finding the land unsuitable and requesting new reservations on certain occasions they also were forced to move yet again because they were caught up in the conflicts between Native American tribes and American settlers this was despite the fact that the hooch chunk were very rarely aggressive in the ways that they resisted American expansion usually when they were ordered to leave a place they just simply would not do so and would wait for the Army to show up and force them to and the end result of this strategy was actually somewhat successful today while the hooch chunk don't have a singular reservation of their own they do have a recognized Nation with the federal government of the United States of America and they have been progressively working to buy back their old lands so that they can just own them themselves this means that the hooch chunk status is a little bit different from reservation status Native American tribes like the Navajo and while they are progressively working to acquire more of their ancestral land the hooch chunk have not been able to do that with all of it but it was in the aftermath of all of these removals that Nathan mirik set up his fur trading settlement on the Eastern banks of the Mississippi at the juncture with the lacrosse river which of course itself was named for the Native American sport that dates to about the 12th century ad as I mentioned earlier in the video Lacrosse today is a bustling city of 50,000 people 20,000 of whom are students at local universities one of those students was Luke homman who was born to Jerry and Patty homman back in 1985 Luke's father Jerry was a basketball player from Marquette University and Luke decided that he wanted to follow in his Father's Footsteps despite the fact that most of his family and friends thought he was really a much better fit for football they were not entirely wrong about that because as a team the 6'3 Luke played both basketball and football for Brookfield Central High School and everyone was very right about him being a great fit for football he led his team to the state finals as quarterback in the year 2002 however it appears that Luke's true passion was basketball and he was a star player at Brookfield he played guard having about 18.6 points per game and making all area honors this was enough to gain the attention of Coach Bruce Pearl who at the time was at w Milwaukee coach Pearl invited Luke to walk onto the team but when pearl left to coach at Tennessee Luke decided that he wanted to go to a different school to get more playing time and he did that by transferring to the University of Wisconsin at lacrosse there in his junior year he led the team to one of their best seasons in decades while also being a finance major in September of 2006 the 21-year-old Luke was settling into his senior year and he decided that he was going to go out with some friends on September 29th to celebrate Octoberfest and Lacrosse like many college towns has a pretty intense drinking culture some bars at the time were offering $5 all you can drink specials as well as $1 shots now as in Ane as $1 shot sounds I do think the media maybe gave this a little bit too much hype considering that in State College Pennsylvania where I went to school Penn State University one of the bars did have 13 cent beer KN and that was in 2019 like I was getting $6 Long Island Ice teas in 2020 so yes dollar shots is pretty insane but it's not necessarily unique what is unique about lacrosse is the really staggering number of people who drowned as a result of alcohol and while I know that it's not totally reasonable to compare State College to Lacrosse because State College doesn't have the Mississippi River running through it it is kind of important to point out that a college town that has a river is probably going to have more drownings than a college town that does not have a river what really sticks out to me is not necessarily the fact that there are a bunch of drownings but specifically the nature of those drownings they were all ruled as accidental alcohol rated death and something about that just doesn't sit well with me or actually with several other investigators and we'll sort of get into that later in the video but I want to go over the night of September 29th 2006 for you on that specific Night Luke had gone out with several of his friends namely Ryan Schmidt and Nick wera as well as his cousin Brian Hillis all three men were in town from Milwaukee for a charity golf event in which Luke would also be participating and one that by all accounts he was extraordinarily excited about that golf event was supposed to be the next morning Saturday the 30th earlier in the day on the 29th however Luke and his friends and his roommates held a party at their place at 1504 Main Street in Lacrosse Wisconsin and according to the accounts of his roommates and Friends Luke was having himself a grand old time at those parties even being sloppily falling over drunk around 2:30 p.m. which again nothing I'm not personally familiar with from college by the time that his friends Brian Nick and Ryan arrived however sometime between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. Luke was in much better shape he was a lot more sober he was coherent and he was able to have conversations with everybody now as for Brian Nick and Ryan their stories about the evening all have slight variations from one another but they match on the key details according to Ryan Schmidt the boys arrived in Lacrosse around 7 to 7:30 p.m. where they saw Luke at another friend's house before they all decided to head over to the vibe a bar at around 8:00 p.m. Nick's account is much the same claiming that they saw Luke at a friend also named Ryan's house around 6:30 p.m. and that he went home first before meeting them at the vibe around 8:30 finally Luke's cousin Brian said that they arrived sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. and then they saw Luke and then they headed to the vibe where he arrived after they did and while at the bar Luke was reported to be drunk but completely coherent he was walking he was talking catching up with old friends and generally knew what was going on around him so despite the fact that he had been pretty pretty rough around 2:30 p.m. m. nobody was concerned about his well-being at this point by the accounts I was able to piece together regarding that night it appears that the plan was to go bar hopping to stop in at one have a drink go to the next one and for Brian Nick and Ryan that was precisely what they intended to do they went to the vibe they had a drink or two and then they decided they were going to go to LongHorns around 9 or 10 p.m. however Luke did not go with them and based on the reports given by Nick Brian and Ryan nobody was really sure if he left the bar or if he stayed at the bar Nick specifically said he wasn't sure if Luke had left before or after they did what they could all agree on was that they had last seen Luke sometime around 900 p.m. at the vibe after those three left it appears that Luke was hanging out with a friend of his by the name of Austin Scott now Austin was a freshman and according to him Luke had gotten into a verbal altercation with three men at the bar around 12:30 p.m. and then he just decided to leave as a result then Austin says around 20 minutes later the three men came back engaged in an altercation with Austin and one of them even broke a glass bottle on Austin's head and then at that point you know because he was bleeding Austin decided it was probably time to go home in the morning Luke was expected at that golf outing I mentioned by 9:30 a.m. but he didn't show up and that was weird everyone assumed well maybe he's maybe he's just hung over maybe he's not feeling well he overslept but his friends all kind of had the feeling that if he wasn't going to make it this morning Luke wasn't the type of guy to just leave people hanging he would have at least woken up called said hey guys I'm really not feeling good I'm not going to make it and gone back to sleep it didn't take long for people to become concerned about Luke's whereabouts and that concern only grew after one of his roommates discovered that his phone was still under his bed at home complicating matters further nobody could actually recall if they'd seen Luke with his cell phone the night before Luke's friends spent the day trying to figure out where he might be but by 9:00 p.m. on September 30th 2006 they had decided they needed help so Brian Hillis went to the police station and filled out a missing person's report whether he waited until 9:00 p.m. the last time he could recall seeing Luke because of the offs sited misconception that you have to wait 24 hours to file a police report for a missing adult is not clear all available Witnesses were called in which included Ryan Nick and Brian as well as one of Luke's roommates a guy named Scott as well as a friend of his named Zach who had seen him on the 29th around 2:30 p.m. as for Ryan Nick and Brian all three of them agreed that the last time they had seen Luke had been between 9 and 9:30 p.m. the night before and that they had all heard that the last person to see him was Austin Scott the police wasted no time trying to find Luke interviewing the bar owner of the vibe Scott gums at 1:45 a.m. on October 1st and they were doing this specifically for the purpose of learning what band played that night why they wanted this information is not clear from the police reports that the lacrosse Police Department was willing to share with us which was not all of them nor did the medical examiner ever respond to our request for a copy of the autopsy report or even a comment on the case but the fact that they decided to go and ask about the band implies that they had a reason to ask about the band that reason is not clear Scott gums was able to inform the police that a band called serve the shame had played from 8:00 p.m. till close that night but he himself had left at around 11: p.m. gums also recalled that band member Shawn olssen had stopped by his residence after the show and according to Shawn there had been an altercation that night and one in which he was involved as he was loading his gear into his SUV in the alley behind the bar somebody was urinating on the wall and apparently that got a little bit too close to his amp and was splashing onto it Shawn said hey can you stop that the man decided he did not want to stop that and instead socked Shawn olssen right in the face gums did note that it appeared Shawn had no injuries to his face but also that he probably didn't know the man who was involved unfortunately he had no security cameras in the alley so there was no further information Beyond witness statements but in the midst of all of the invest investigation one name kept resurfacing it was Austin Scott The Freshman who had allegedly last seen luk Omen it appears that sometime between the evening of September 9th and the time that all of Luke's friends gave their statements around midnight on October 1st Austin had gone and told a whole bunch of people about this altercation between Luke and these three men initially the police strategy was to try and figure out who these three asants were but it quickly became apparent that only one altercation had occurred that night at the vibe and it was the one involving Shawn Olsen and Luke homman didn't match the description of the man who had attacked Shawn according to the statement made by Shawn and his girlfriend the man who had punched him was smaller than he was and wearing a light colored shirt which just didn't match Luke who was 6'3 and wearing a maroon hoodie so as it became apparent that this hunt for three men was really kind of a wild goose chase the suspicion turned away from these mystery guys over to Austin Scott himself as it turned out Austin's story lacked consist consistency his friends had heard that there was an altercation between Luke and three men and then that those same three men had hit Austin in the head with a bottle at which point he decided to leave the bar but when interviewed by police Austin's story started to change he was informed by investigators that the bar actually hadn't been selling beer in glass bottles that night but rather in plastic cups so Austin's story changed and it was that Luke had only been arguing with one man and that Austin had just been punched to add to the confusion there was a sighting of Luke that conflicted with Austin's narrative according to somebody but retold by the coach on the basketball team Luke had been seen at Coconut Joe's Bar over on Third Street around 11:30 p.m. with Austin's story constantly changing and not adding up even when it was consistent the police became pretty skeptical that anything had actually happened at all they became even more skeptical after dogs managed to sent Luke and trace him all the way from the 300 block of Third Street to Riverside Park then on Monday October 2 2006 the police brought in cadaver dogs to the spot where the blood hounds had lost Luke's scent the cadav dogs were able to narrow the search area enough for divers from lacrosse area underwater rescue to get into the water and unfortunately a few feet offshore in about 10 ft of water they did find the deceased body of Luke homman following his removal from the water Luke was taken to the regional coroner's office in Hastings Minnesota now while I could not get my hands on the autopsy documents no matter how hard I tried I was was able to piece them together from other reports and some TV shows that have covered this case as well and according to those documents the autopsy showed that Luke had bruises and abrasions on his forehead biceps right side and Knuckles as well as epidermal blisters on his wrists as well as three scratches and a pressure wound on his forehead with a blood alcohol content of 32 now what was interesting about the injuries was not necessarily their location which is interesting but rather their coloration because injuries that are incurred after somebody dies are not read and Luke's were what that means is that Luke was most likely alive when he sustained those bruises and abrasions additionally Luke's state of decomposition was listed as slight to moderate which the investigators from Oxygen Network Smiley faed Killers The Hunt For Justice said didn't really match up with the 50ish hours he was supposed to have been in the water now of course Luke's placement in running cold fresh water would have slowed his decomposition considerably what really stuck out to me was that after 3 days he was still at the bottom of the water and so far as I was aware a body should float in that period of time the problem that I had in investigating this case is that the lacrosse Police Department did not provide us with everything that they had and just honestly brazenly lied to us about why they did not provide us with half of the files and the medical examiner never got back to to us without cooperation from the lacrosse police department and with nothing from medical examiner we didn't really have a ton to go on but what I know from investigating other cases is that typically it takes a body 2 to 3 days to start floating in the water after drowning so what I'm saying is it it didn't necessarily stick out to me that his Decay was listed as slight to moderate in cold water rather was the fact that he had not risen to the surface but that's not necessarily impossible just struck me as a little odd and there's more to it because while Luke's death was classified ifed as an accidental drowning related to alcohol impairment or alternatively as a cold water drowning depending on which report you look at nobody would say if Luke had water in his lungs in the Todd gu case that we covered about a month ago that was a pretty serious point of issue because Todd had to have had water in his lungs in order for him to drown in the way they claim he did and while dry drowning is a phenomenon it does exist it doesn't really work in the cases we're talking about here where people would have gone into the water while conscious and then inhaled water and drowned and it was something that the smiley face Killers The Hunt For Justice team really harped on in the Todd guide case and I think they were right to do so on the other hand with this case the medical examiner would not respond to my direct questions about if he had water in his lungs alternatively the smiley face Killers guys wouldn't really say that he didn't have water in his lungs and it appears that they did see the autopsy report for both sides I feel like either the presence of or the lack of water really would seal this you know if he has water in his lungs it's probably just an accident if he doesn't have water in his lungs it's probably not an accident so the fact that neither party harped on this really is odd to me and given the way that the lacrosse police department has responded to this series of drownings and the insistence by certain community members that there must be a serial killer you would think that they would be like hey guys he had water in his lungs you would think that they would use use a piece of evidence like that to stop people from trying to spread what they view as a pernicious rumor it just doesn't really make sense to me and that's not weird for this case because I have poured through all of the records that were available and that were given to me and I'm just stunned by how much of it really does not add up one glaring issue that I see with this case is actually Austin Scott story and that's because Austin Scott was actually cited and detained for underage drinking with a blood alcohol content of 266 at 958 p.m. on September 29th 2006 and the location where he was cited was in fact Riverside Park where Luke's body would eventually be found he physically could not have seen Luke leave the bar at 12:30 p.m. nor could he have witnessed any altercation because he simply was not there now it is possible considering that Luke was sented to Riverside Park and Austin was actually caught by police in Riverside Park that they were in the park together that night but considering that Luke was cited again at a bar a couple hours later it seems very unlikely interestingly enough at the time he was apprehended Austin did have a cut and a bump on his forehead but he was so drunk that he almost certainly can't have remembered how he actually got them the next day he initially told police that he had fallen but he didn't know where he also didn't have ID and according to the police report he had to be informed that he was even injured in the first place but if you're confused cuz I just threw a whole bunch of information at you that didn't really add up good cuz that's how I felt while I was researching this story good news is we're about to sift through all of it and try to piece together a narrative about what could have happened that night without police cooperation it's hard to even start trying to assess what could have happened here but there are some specific details that we do have Luke was last seen by credible witnesses around 9 p.m. on September 29th 2006 he was then seen three more times according to his coach on the basketball team Luke may have left the vibe at 34th Street as early as 9:00 p.m. the thing is his friend seemed unsure if he'd actually left before or after they did or if he'd left at all in fact it seems as though they were relying on Austin Scott's story for the most part to determine what happened after they left the bar he was then allegedly spotted at Coconut Joe's which is at 1283 Street South at 11:30 p.m. the alleged sighting that followed that was at the library bar just across the street from Coconut Joe's sometime between 1:00 a.m. and 2: a.m. and then finally there's sort of a unaccounted for final sighting that may have been at the vibe between 2:15 and 2:30 a.m. in addition to the sightings Luke did have several superficial injuries indicative of perhaps being involved in some sort of fight or struggle but nothing that was fatal or incapacitating abrasions on his knuckles could suggest that he was in a fight and the blisters on his wrists could imply that he had been tied tied up and if his wrists were tied up that could imply that the knuckle marks were in fact from being dragged either along a carpet or perhaps asphalt and that possibility brings up another issue which is that the expert spoken to by Ganon and Duarte the smiley face Killers detectives seem to think that there is a bootprint that that is what caused the pressure wound the pressure bruise to Luke's forehead and the top of his head if the cause of that bruising was in fact a boot pressing down on his head it really does in my op opinion rule out the whole this was accidental thing because it really does show that Luke was involved in some sort of conflict that evening in addition to that the bootprint appears to show a pretty narrow toe line which I find interesting but we'll get to that something that I believe could be connected to the possible bootprint with the narrow toe line is a mark on his clothes or actually several marks there were flexs of a fluorescent orange material still present on Luke's sweatshirt when the smiley face Killers detectives brought all of his clothes to experts back in 2018 and according to the forensic experts who reviewed this clothing what they found was that that substance could be anything from paint to nail polish now given that a neon orange smiley face was found spray painted onto the asphalt on a nearby Road the smiley face Killers guys jumped to the conclusion that oh this is this is connected this orange Fleck is in fact from the same orange spray paint as the smiley face that we found this is a smiley face killing but I think they may be connecting the wrong dots because they're looking for a serial killer or gang specifically connected to these smiley faces based on the combination of the narrow toe line bootprint his wrists possibly having been tied up and the flex of orange fluorescent material found on his clothing I wonder if both the police and the smiley face Killers guys are missing a pretty major aspect of this I think that if Luke hman was in fact attacked and this was not an accident I think the majority of the evidence point point to the asent being female but that is of course assuming that this was not an accident that he did not simply get drunk and fall into the river himself I want to be clear that that is still a possibility I don't feel like this case is closed in either direction but let's take a look at what else we know here lacrosse has a history of college-aged men drowning under alcohol rated circumstances with luk hman being the eighth in a series that began with Richard havav back in 1997 prior to Luke the most recent drowning had been Jared Dion on back in 2004 now the thing is Luke was aware of this pattern of drowning deaths Luke did not like swimming and Luke had told his parents after they had instructed him not to go near the Mississippi that he had no intention of doing so still drunk people can do stupid things but I think it's important to have that context that Luke was well aware that this was something that was going on there's also the fact that walking to the River from where Luke was wouldn't just be kind of dumb it would be a special kind of stupid St and the last place that Luke was allegedly seen the vibe which is basically the last place Luke was seen no matter who you ask unless you're going to say that it was Coconut Joe's or the library in which case they're very close to the vibe and my point that I'm about to make still stands his home was in completely the opposite direction of the river in fact it was basically you walk 200 yards or maybe a couple of blocks north and then you hang a right East and go for a mile until you get to his home the river was in entirely the wrong direction and not confusing way the river was due west of where he was and his home was due east of where he was and Lacrosse is laid out as a grid there was no winding streets he had to work his way through no confusing alleys he could have very easily even very drunk again his alcohol his blood alcohol was. 32 but you the way that this is set up it would be really something if he somehow managed to go west instead of East there is also the lack of decomposition that I feel is important to bring up but may not be important to the case because it was September the water was pretty cold I think it was somewhere between 40 and 60 degrees whereas warm water is considered over 68 so considering it was late at night it was probably on the lower end of that Spectrum which means that he probably would have just decomposed more slowly anyway what is a bit odd about his State when he was found is the lack of mud that was on his clothes when they pulled him out of the river but again that's not necessarily A Smoking Gun it could just be that he was in a spot where he didn't get all that muddy it's not outside the realm of possibility we also do know that the wounds he sustained must have happened while he was alive because they were red as I said he had several injuries consistent with a fight but also with being tied up and the blood alcohol content could explain why he was unconscious and how he drowned in the river but it doesn't necessarily explain how he got into the river the Bindings that may have been on his wrists could have been a precaution in case he woke up and somebody needed to to make sure that he did not in fact slip out or have a chance to fight and there's the fact that it was a very narrow toe line on the bootprint which again implies that it was a women's shoe as for his clothes as I said they had a lack of mud they had some weird orange flexs but they also had broken belt loops and Luke's belt was found on his body when he was discovered in the water while these all could be coincidences they also could be indicative of somebody who was tied up dragged and then lifted via their belt and shirt to be thrown and the final thing of note regarding that Knight is Austin Scott and his story because he seems to have memories of that evening swimming around and not really making sense and that's assuming he's not outright lying we can place Austin Scott at that Park alone but only before Luke was last cited not in the park rather downtown and in addition to that both men had head wounds upon discovery which leads me to wonder what if Austin and Luke are connected but in a different way than than everybody's thinking you see since 1997 11 young men have drowned in Lacrosse under alcohol rated circumstances all but one of these deaths occurred during the school year with the first one the death of Richard cavity happening in July all of these men were between the ages of 18 and 28 all were conventionally attractive and all had a blood alcohol content two to four times the legal limit now the first of those deaths Richard cavity happened after he and his brother got into a fight with a group of guys they ran away they jumped in the river to escape and unfortunately Richard drowned so what that means is it's probably not relevant to the rest of the cases it's also the only one to happen in the summer the next one to drown was Charles Blatz and that was on the 28th of September 1997 so very similar timing to Luke hman the 5- foot1 28-year-old veteran and Engineering student was visiting for October Fest and was last seen at a bar near Pearl Street he was found 5 days later off the Seventh Street Landing now Charles Blatz had a blood alcohol content of 31 and he was was found floating face down again this was after 5 days now looking at the timing that could explain why luk hman didn't surface after three it could be that in water that cold that time of year bodies Take 5 days the next drowning death to occur was only a few days later on October 5th 1997 and that was Tony shifton he was last seen walking across a foot Bridge after leaving a party and was found in Swift Creek 5 days later he had a blood alcohol content of. 23 Swift Creek is Downstream of where both Luke and Charles were located as for Tony while a physical description was not readily available I was able to find a few pictures of him and he does fit the profile the next one was 20-year-old vbo University student Nathan Caper who was last seen walking alone down Third Street after being cited for underage drinking at Brothers Bar at 306 Pearl now he was last seen February 18th 1998 and he was found 41 days later in April at autopsy his blood alcohol content was. 22 though due to the nature of how alcohol content in the blood increases after death especially a drowning death it was probably lower when he died interestingly enough his hat his wallet and I believe his keys citation documents actually were all found neatly stacked near a statue of a Native American in Riverside Park and all of that was found shortly after he went missing not after he was found on April 11th 1999 Jeffrey geesi a 20-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin lacrosse was last at Club Millennium at 1213 Street talking to two girls he was 6'2 and an engineering major he was found on May 24th in running slow which itself is an offshoot of the Mississippi River about 1.5 miles Downstream from where Charles and Tony were found he had a blood alcohol content of 042 the next was a man named Patrick runan and he was last seen in March of 2001 but I don't think he's connected because he was last seen about 4 miles from where everybody else seems to have gone missing near on Alaska to the north he disappeared March 1st and was found March 8th but this was in Black River near the French Island beach he had a blood alcohol content of 0.24 but just based on the details of his disappearance and where he was found and all of that I highly doubt that he was connected to these others 5'9 in tall wrestler and University of Wisconsin lacrosse student Jared Dion was last seen outside John's bar at 1093 Street around 2:30 a.m. on April 10th 2004 he was found in almost exactly the same location that Luke homman would be found 2 years later interestingly around the time he went missing his hat was found hanging on a post in Riverside Park at autopsy his blood alcohol content was .27 and much like Luke he was not floating he was found by divers exactly a year to the day after Luke homan's death a young man named Christopher melan Khan also died drowning in the Mississippi River he was a marine veteran in and he was in town visiting friends for October Fest he was last seen by his friends around midnight and then he was found in the Mississippi River deceased at 2:33 a.m. his blood alcohol content was .24 and allegedly he either fell or jumped off of the cast Street Bridge into the water I think 30 ft below now of course that may sound like a suicide attempt but nobody who knew Chris felt like he was even depressed let alone suicidal of course he was a veteran given his age he probably served in Iraq or Afghanistan PTSD is a possibility but like I said nobody seemed to have any inkling that he might be remotely interested in harming himself now the only eyewitness account claims that he in fact fell off of the bridge which is interesting because police say that would be extraordinarily different and I have to agree the bridge had a guard rail that was 42 in 3 and a half ft tall the witness was a 21-year-old woman who was a resident of nearby lacrescent Minnesota and she said that she was only about 100 ft away from Christopher when he went over the edge of the bridge and she said she couldn't tell if he fell or jumped as for why she was on the bridge in the first place according to her she had been in town for October Fest she got tired and she wanted to go home and had called her parents to come pick her up she decided to walk down the bridge so that they didn't have to drive all the way into busy lacrosse she also says that she herself entered the water to try and save him but unable to find him was forced to get out and call for help now despite the fact fact that investigators said it was extremely unlikely that Christopher simply fell over the bridge rather he either jumped or was pushed they ruled it in accidental drowning and then the final death in this string that I think could even remotely be connected was Craig Meyers and that was in 2010 now while he did drown near Riverside Park he was last seen around 2:00 a.m. on Cass Street walking West and the people who dropped him off at near his house said that he was just extremely drunk like didn't even know where he was that night the Mississippi River had frozen over and it is believed that he walked out onto the ice fell through a thin patch and simply drowned he was found 2 days later with a blood alcohol content of0 28 but in my opinion he doesn't quite match the description he was 56 and 200 lb though he was the right age at 21 and in case I forgot to mention it this was uh Valentine's Day 2010 now I cannot explain why he would walk out onto the ice aside from the fact that he had a blood alcohol content of2 at and the people who dropped him off said that he was just completely confused as to where he even was so the thing is while some of these disappearances and deaths can be explained and others just seem unconnected I did find what seems to be a pattern Charles Blatz Nathan Caper Jeffrey geesi Jared Dion and Luke hman were all seen at bars on the 100 block of thirdd Street the night they disappeared and all five were found either down river of or right next to Riverside Park all of these men with the exception of Nathan Caper were so far as I can tell single this leads me to believe that they may have been going to Riverside Park to meet up with a girl that they had initially met at one of the bars on Third Street if there is one thing that I can think of that would make a rather drunk young man decide to completely ignore every sense of self-preservation it would be going to meet a pretty girl as for Nathan it could simply be that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time he had been cited for drinking that night maybe he was just going for a walk to clear his head and was unfortunately caught up in something of a a Serial killing mess now I say that because I would like to see the best in people and believe that Nathan had not met a girl at the bars on Third Street and decided to cheat on his girlfriend with her but I would be remiss if I did not include that possibility when I take all of the evidence surrounding this string of drownings into account it makes me wonder if perhaps both the police and the smiley face Killers guys are looking at this the wrong way these aren't 10 Connected killings between 1997 and 2010 they're five connected killings between 1997 and 2006 and all of the victims were seen at the same strip of bars on Third Street the night they went missing as I said if there is one thing that can make a 20-some man ignore all of his instincts it is a pretty girl asking him to meet up later you might be asking Aiden how could you possibly know that well I'm 26 4 years ago I was a 22-year-old man in college and I absolutely ignored my survival instincts on several occasions because girls asked me to going to be perfectly honest when I look back at my college experience I'm not sure how I'm alive but even with all of this evidence taken into account and if we do go with the theory that perhaps this was a female killer or Killers it still leaves the question of who and why and until police departments start to cooperate with independent investigators instead of throwing up every possible wall they can at every turn we're probably not going to get to the bottom of it the fact of the matter is independent investigators especially 10 20 years on simply have more time and more resources to get to the bottom of these disappearances and of course it is still entirely within the realm of possibility that all of these were just disconnected horrible accidental tragic drownings but until I see more details and until police departments around the country stop trying to obfuscate things I'm going to be skeptical this is of course not the last video we're doing on a smiley face Killer's case and it's absolutely not the last time I'm going to think about what the broader narrative could be here as with the Missing 411 phenomenon we plan to go through a whole bunch of these cases over the course of the next year and then at the end do a meta analysis in that time if you come across information in a case we've already covered or a case we are working on or have yet to cover please please please send it to us you can reach us at the lur Lodge gmail.com that is the best way to share information with us and if you feel like it's something you don't want to share electronically our PO Box is 937 in Phoenixville Pennsylvania 19460 so if you have any information on any of these cases perhaps you actually knew the person or you were involved in the investigation or some manner please we are we are pleading with you to help us with that said if you'd like to support our work in other ways you can subscribe to our patreon for just $1 a month it is really helpful I promise you even just the $1 though we do have higher tiers you could also check out our merch store which I have to figure out why it's not working anymore but there will be a new link soon it's probably going to be like shop.the lodge.com but I will update that soon you can also get our coffee from Tableau Roasting Company I designed it myself it is a delicious medium dark roast uh personally it's you know it's one of my favorite coffee and I don't say that out of nowhere this is not a thing where we picked a coffee off of a website or somebody sent us a bunch of Blends and we chose I worked very closely with Matt Moore the owner and the roster to create the exact flavor profile that I want and in my opinion it is a perfect balance between something you can drink black with enough complexity to enjoy or you can pop some cream and sugar into it and drink it you know just like that you're not really going to be ruining it you don't need to pile cream and sugar in it's going to be tasty if you ever have specific questions about these C or you want to hear this in a more discussion based format we of course have our live show that is at 700 p.m. on Sunday evenings that is Eastern time and that only really ever changes if there's a holiday something comes up or there's an Eagles game if you can't catch it live the video on demand is always here on YouTube and there's also video and audio that you can listen to or watch over on any of the podcasting platforms that support that and if you're curious about how you can get the most updates or engage with the community the best place you can do that is our Discord server which which is bit. l/j jointhe Lodge and you can also check out our other channels the history Hut the lore Lounge the weird Bible returning in February and my personal Channel Aiden Mattis where on Tuesdays we do reaction and commentary style content and then Thursday and Friday are gaming streams I think that just about covers everything with all of that said I am Aiden Mattis and thank you for stopping by the L [Music] LOD

Channel: The Lore Lodge

Views: 371,641

Keywords: the lore lodge, lore, folklore, history, culture, education, entertainment, social studies, humanities, anthropology, aidan mattis, smiley face killer, smiley face killers, smiley face murders, smiley face killer documentary, smiley face murder, smiley face killer theory, unsolved mysteries, serial killers, true crime, kevin gannon, anthony duarte, true crime documentary, unsolved case, the smiley face murders, crime documentary, smiley face death, serial killer, luke homan

Id: -ywQ-FrRH4A

Length: 45min 29sec (2729 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023