Did the Michigan State Police Cover Up a Murder?

in today's Story the Michigan State Police say there is absolutely zero evidence of Foul Play they are wrong I'm Aiden Mattis and welcome back to the L Lodge on June 11th 2005 22-year-old Todd gu and some friends attended a keg party in casnovia Michigan Todd rented a room from his cousin in casnovia Township but he worked for Hager distribution down in Grand Rapids and you know what else has to do with distribution our sponsor and partner today factor factor absolutely does distribute food to its customers but the more important part is the kind of food that factor distributes because what it is is the kind of thing you'd expect for most restaurants it does have that level of flavor it does have that level of quality and most importantly there is an entire menu of over 34 options that you can choose from any given week we love Factor because it takes a lot of the hassle out of the day obviously if I'm going to cook dinner for myself every every night that's going to take 30 minutes of 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easy and most importantly Factor makes it delicious once again if you want to try factor for yourself head to factor 75 or click the link below and use code lur Lodge 50 to get 50% off your first Factor box and honestly one of my favorite things about factor is that it does make a pretty perfect midnight snack which may be what Todd gu was going for when he left that party around 1245 a.m. on June 12th 2005 thing is Todd didn't make it home that night and he didn't show up the next day either in fact he was unfortunately found deceased 3 weeks later in a nearby lake and yet despite knowing when he disappeared and seeing where he turned up the circumstances of his demise simply left more questions for a small town already reeling from this tragedy and casnovia really is a small town it's more a collection of villages in casnovia Township which has a population of 2200 of which only 319 live in the actual Village of casnovia kovia itself was settled in 1850 by a man named lot Fulkerson after the land had been seeded to the United States in 18 1936 prior to concentrated white settlement of the area this was the domain of the Ottawa people who we talked about pretty extensively in our video about Steven kabaki the Algonquin speaking Ottawa are cousins of Ontario's Ojibwa as well as Southern Michigan's patami peoples these three related tribes were all part of the Council of the Three Fires which was an Al gonin speaking Alliance likely formed around 796 ad this of course was part of the larger anishinabe culture which migrated to the Great Lakes sometime between 2,000 and 1,000 years ago along with the Council of the Three Fires the inish ab culture included several other tribes like the and I am going to try my best with these pronunciations the misas the nping the Algonquin and the Salto all of which were of course anishinabi Algonquin speakers the Great Lakes were the nucleus of their culture which stretched from the western side of Ontario near the Alberta border to the western side of Quebec and then north to south from really middle Ontario down to Illinois and Indiana Michigan was peopled primarily by the Ottawa in the north with the patami in the South and the Ojibwa just sort of across the Lakes from them in Canada their culture was based around a very interesting Clan system in which each Clan had specific roles within the broader tribal structure there were seven total which included the deer Clan Eagle crane Turtle loon bear and Martin the Martin is a small mammal sort of a a ground squirrel type thing and it's actually related to The Wolverine of course Clan is a European term in the Algonquin culture these were called doem and each of these seven clans which were named after these seven important animals in the culture had seven sub Clans within it this meant that you had a total of 49 Clans now each Clan did not live in its own settlement as you might expect there's kind of this idea coming from the more Scottish and Irish structure that you might be more familiar with where a clan is typically centered around a location but these clans were centered around responsibilities however they were still familial which meant that intimate relations and marriage was banned within each Clan kinship was passed through the father's line but that didn't mean that you couldn't become a part of the tribe if your father was not a member what it meant is you just had to find a clan that was willing to adopt you and if you're curious about those governance responsibilities that we talked about well I'll go through them for you the deer Clan was responsible for the ceremonies celebrations and General Social aspects of the civilization Eagle was the academic side they were responsible for keeping knowledge and passing it down the crane Clan was seen as the outside Chief which meant that they handled matters of diplomacy trade just anything that was intertribal the turtle Clan were both the lawmakers and the justice system but that didn't mean that they had the total final say in everything there's basically nothing within this structure that doesn't have some sort of check or balance for example if the turtle Clan wrote and presented a law then all of the other clans had to agree to it in order for it to pass and if you didn't like the decision made by a turtle Clan member regarding Justice you might go to the L Clan who were the internal Chief and responsible for settling disputes within the tribe the bear clan was sort of the medicinal and spiritual center of things as well as the Protectors of the Homeland and then if you're wondering who the warriors were well that was the Martin Clan and in times when there were no Wars and you didn't need Warriors they were usually responsible for hunting and building which makes sense considering that both of those would be important activities for any war that these people might have been involved in and depending on which source you're reading some of them do mention that there was going to to be a Thunderbird Clan but that never materialized for a variety of reasons according to their own oral tradition the Anish AB came from the dawn lands which most people have interpreted as being the Atlantic coast to the east but what's really interesting about this story is why they left the dawn lands because according to Legend seven prophets arrived who foretold the coming of the Europeans or perhaps more specifically who foretold the coming of a light-skinned race now if you go based on genetics Linguistics and also just their own tradition it really seems like the place that these people came from was the area that today we call Nova Scotia Maine newfinland and New Brunswick the inab were an offshoot group of these tribes who decided that they were going to go west as The Story Goes they were supposed to seek a turtle-shaped island and there would be turtle-shaped Islands both at the beginning and the end of their Journey they were also told that they would stop seven times along the way before they got to their destination that light-skinned race that was going to come would either bring Prosperity or ruin and they would know which it would be based on the face that these people wore and this face would either be the face of Brotherhood or the face of death it also tells of a time when a new people and this is the word that gets used is new people will rise and restart rekindle the flame of the anishinabe culture at which point the light-skinned race will have a choice to make and that choice could lead either to Great prosperity for the entire world or it could lead to the destruction of the entire world so far as I can tell that last part hasn't come to pass yet but if the light-skinned race is in fact european-americans I hope we make the right choice as I said the archaeological and linguistic evidence points to this journey having occurred sometime between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago and the Europeans arrived around 1500 ad largely their prophecy seems to have come true of course it is possible that this prophecy is actually them recording their history and retrofitting it to be a prophecy but that's really not there's no certainty there so I don't want to make the argument that that's all this is when it could very well be that their Elders did foretell this and I don't necessarily think that's impossible because of course if this happened after 1,000 ad that they made this journey well they could have encountered the Vikings who actually had a settlement in Newland just to the east of where the inab claimed to have come from of course if this journey happened earlier and the Council of the Three Fires is dated to about 79 96 ad by one historian within the anishinabi community and I'm not trying to discredit that work I'm just pointing out that this is this is one man's work and what I'm saying here is not that we should basically question or dismiss any of this as hokey or as you know just kind of like Backwoods knowledge folktales or whatever no I'm saying the exact opposite I think this is an incredibly compelling case that there was earlier contact between Europeans and natives than we thought there was and that's worth looking into because it also suggests that they weren't sure when the Europeans arrived if they were supposed to trust them or not which is kind of a weird thing to say about a group of people that you've never encountered before that are just sort of being told to you so I wouldn't be shocked if these seven prophets who came to them on the mainland were in fact seven real human beings who came to the people on the mainland from Newland with this story about the Vikings of course it really does depend on on when this happened but I'm curious and I hope that we get to look into it more now the nations of the inish ab were at first on pretty good terms with the Europeans they first allied with the French to fight against the British and then allied with the British to fight against the Americans in both the Revolution and the War of 1812 this means that they spent three generations fighting against American colonists on behalf of the French and English Empires and the thce Victorious Americans were not exactly in a forgiving mood after 1815 the Ojibwa as well as the and the patami continued to resist American advancement until they finally signed the Treaty of Washington in 1836 relinquishing those lands to the young American Republic the Salto who were actually in Ojibwa offshoot ended up facing a similar fate and being forced West by American and Canadian expansion those not located in the United States despite sacrificing life and land for their British allies ended up suffering indignities at the hands of the protoc Canadians anyway the misala sold most of their land to the British in 1781 with the intention of it actually going to the iqua but it didn't go to the iqua the Canadians just granted it to American Loyalist settlers who were fleeing a Now American country after signing the Robinson treaty the nissing were relegated to just a 23 square mile reservation and that was in 1850 the Algonquin much like the others located within Canada faced that same fate of basically having their land taken and given to settlers despite the fact that it was promised to them by the British government this was the cause of many of the conflicts between between settlers and Native Americans was the English promising the same land to both groups that's right England if you thought that you were absolved of this because of you know the whole Independence thing no it's still your fault it's our fault too but you started it but it was on former Ottawa or patami territory that lot Fulkerson set down that piece of land that would become casnovia Michigan casnovia coming from the Latin words for house and new meaning new home and like any small town casnovia today is a very tight-knit Community where everybody knows each other or at least knows of each other and every summer on two or three occasions the young people of casnovia Township would Gather in an orchard off of White Road this Orchard was just south of avit Hall Lake as well as about a quar of a mile west of Michigan Route 37 locally M37 is also called newo Road about a 100 people would attend each of these parties where everybody would set up a bonfire sit on the tailgates of their trucks have some beers listen to music and just kind of hang out these were simple rural country bonfire parties now all of this information comes from a former bartender at the Half Moon bar and grill where Todd gu was something of a regular that bar which was located about a half a mile from Todd's place is now a U-Haul dealership at 75 newgo road now as for Todd himself well he was a younger guy he was 22 he was in good shape he enjoyed fishing he enjoyed being in the outdoors and from what I can tell he was generally very well-liked he also didn't work all that far away Grand Rapids is about a half an hour drive according to his mother Kathy he was like most people his age he had his ups and downs but he was doing pretty well she says that he was fun-loving and a great kid who was very serious about his family Todd may have stopped into the Half Moon bar and grill before he headed to the party on that night of July 11th 2005 but it seems he arrived at the party around 9:30 p.m. he was dropped off along with several Friends by a designated driver and proceeded to just enjoy himself at the party for several hours these parties were on land owned by a man named Richard Carlson and according to him it was one of his sons who would actually organized them they did the parties in their old apple orchard which if you look at the area around covia it is just apple orchards as far as the eye can see but this one appears to have been overgrown and in disuse aside from these parties one of Todd's friends named Nicole colen brander who was a bartender at the halfon said that she had seen him there that night at the party and he seemed happy he was definitely a little intoxicated but not sloppy not you know falling all over the place just generally having a good time in a good mood mood sometime between midnight and 12:45 a.m. Todd informed his friends that he was just kind of not feeling it and he was going to head home at 12:47 a.m. the friend who had actually driven Todd there called him and it seems maybe asked where he was why he hadn't stayed it's unclear exactly what happened but Todd responded and told the friend that he had simply had enough and he was going to walk the mile into half home which mean it's not that far to walk and it was a nice summer night I can't blame the kid oh God the kid and that felt natural yeah oh we're getting there oh oh no no this is like when somebody called me sir last summer and it felt like a punch to the gut yeah yeah anyway at 12:51 he called a female acquaintance of his who is not named in any of the reports but is mentioned in the police report and allegedly according to what I could find between newspapers and the police documents he told this friend that he was lost and that he was in a field appar apparently he told her that he was in a field twice and then the call cut off two more calls were attempted to that friend from Todd's cell phone until 12:57 a.m. but after that nothing came from Todd's cell phone now I will say a lot of the reporting here was not very good there are things that are right in some newspapers that are wrong in others and one newspaper will get something right that the other gets wrong but the second one will get something right that the other one got wrong the police reports aren't super helpful nor were the Michigan State Police forthcoming but from what I can tell I'm wondering if maybe Todd didn't actually tell everybody he was leaving around midnight but if instead that's the last time anybody saw him I think it's possible that he may have left a hell of a lot closer to 12:45 a.m. given that he did get that phone call at 12:47 seemingly asking where he was the reason I say that is because the distance from the orchard party to the road is extremely short we're talking like a quarter of a mile if that if you were walking away from the orchard party there's really only one direction that you can go because it's sort of ringed in by trees if you are walking out of that Orchard it's really hard to get lost so I find it difficult to believe that Todd could have left the party at midnight and been lost at 12:47 a.m. it could not possibly take 45 minutes to walk from where he was to any of the surrounding roads on top of the uncertainty regarding precisely when Todd left the party but we know it was between midnight and 12:45 a.m. aside from that uh it's not clear precisely when the missing person's report was filed but we do know that his family was out looking for him by the afternoon of the 12th the first organized effort appears to have made on June 13th a Monday and it included at least 100 people searching both the area of the party as well as Todd's home at this point the police had listed it as an endangered missing person's case unfortunately despite people spending basically the entirety of the day on Monday searching nothing was found and reading through reports from the next day June 14th 2005 it seems that nothing was found that day either however at some point that week dogs did manage to sent Todd and they followed his sent from the site of the party directly south to White Road and then East now White Road itself is a dirt and gravel road and when it gets to the pavement at M37 his Trail just stopped people continued searching throughout the rest of the week but no new leads came about and at some point during the week again it's unclear because basically every single bit of reporting on this case from the time it happened has been deleted from the Internet it's very strange but it's extremely difficult to access all of this if the article was published prior to 2010 I I had to use the Wayback machine to find it which I'm not saying that to claim there's some sort of conspiracy here I'm just saying that oh my God it was difficult to track this stuff down and I'm not saying that it's like you know it was necessarily hard it was just way harder than us usual like I have an easier time finding documentation from the 1800s than I did on this case also very interesting about it and it really only occurred to me now as we're filming it but the Michigan State Police immediately took over the case mosan County was only assisting despite the fact that it was well within their jurisdiction so I don't it's odd to me that the Michigan State Police stepped in and took over but again maybe I don't know all the details there nobody really would talk to me that's a consistent issue we have with law enforcement by the way um they just they just aren't forc coming at all even on cases that have been cold for a decade and a half you're not going to solve it I might well you know Aiden it would be a horrible thing if the collective you know hive mind of the internet started solving cold cases that would be terrible how dare we bring closure to the families terrible shame on you if only bringing closure to families that are still grieving was more important than the reputation of some small town cops right oh my God I mean I wish that said I don't mean to say anything bad about the mosan County Police they actually did talk to me it's just they couldn't tell me anything cuz they didn't know anything cuz the Michigan State Police apparently did not share and I will say uh as of the time of filming it is November 6th correct it is November 6th 2023 and in just a few days my nitty Lions will be playing the Michigan Wolverines and I must say it is Aiden what time is it right now it is 8:27 it's 8:27 p.m. and Michigan still sucks I do have to give a bit of a shout out to Michigan State however on this one as much as we do enjoy our rivalry with you guys and I like to poke fun uh a a researcher from Michigan state was involved with this case and we'll get to him and he did some really cool work so I do have to shout out Michigan State on that one great job guys but as I was saying with the story the dogs were able to track his scent from the orchard party to White Road East along White Road for a quarter of a mile where the scent just stops dead at M37 after that there were no further leads and the search was suspended some sometime before Saturday the 18th on Saturday the 18th a large volunteer effort of about 1,500 people was organized partially in coordination with the missing you Foundation which at the time was a group that helped people in the midwest to search for missing family members so far as I can tell they have either changed their name or they are now defunct but that is who helped out with the search at the time despite the very large search effort involved with this case they still found absolutely no sign of Todd so another search was planned and this one would also include helicopters as had been used throughout the week but then just before it was supposed to take place it was canceled you see while not included in any of the reporting I've been able to dig up it seems that the Michigan State Police did have some Persons of Interest early in the case it seems that on the 21st or 22nd of the month police received information which pointed much more strongly to those Persons of Interest basically for whatever reason Foul Play now seemed to be the most likely option it was at this point that the search morphed into a suspicious death probe with the police believing that Todd was no longer alive and had likely been hit by a car the night of the party police informed the family of their theory that Todd had been hit by a car and then buried somewhere on the 22nd of the month and this was basically as the rumors began to swirl about who might have done it and how it might have happened and how did nobody hear about it all the while the police were trying to interview as many people as possible and when I say that the rumors were swirling the rumors were swirling according to Vicky green a bartender at another one of Todd's Hangouts called the Cass Todd was very well-liked and this was like the Talk of the Town everyone was devastated they couldn't figure out what had happened alongside interviewing essentially everyone that would admit they were at the party which was another issue that there were a lot of underage kids at the party and while the police said hey if you were drinking at the party we're not going to arrest you we just want to know what happened to Todd a lot of those kids still didn't come forward possibly worried that their parents would be mad at them for being at the party and drinking anyway and you know as far as a lot of them were concerned well Todd still hadn't been found so he might not be dead so it's not a good line of thinking but it is one that I can you know follow but alongside that the police were also going to body shops and inspecting cars that were brought in for repairs basically if it seemed like you know maybe a car could have been involved in an accident with a person they wanted to have a look at it and they were asking around to see if anybody's story about how a car was damaged didn't quite line up with the damage to the car for example if you hit a person and were trying to hide it inste you hit a deer well deer and people are very different weights different weights mean different amounts of damage to the car and the police might be able to track that down unfortunately of the two cars that were involved with accidents that night anywhere within the vicinity of the Town neither of them were actually near Todd and both both of them were fully accounted for and to make matters worse all of their interviews were dead ends with their Persons of Interest being cleared finally on July second there was a break in the case although not a happy one Jim Wy and his wife were taking their boat out onto Lake Avid hall for the day when they realized that their canoe was not usually where they had tied it off and when they took their boat out to get it they realized that it was also full of beer cans and this was odd because according to Jim nobody had ever taken his boat before or his canoe and that was just not something that people did they didn't borrow each other's boats and the local kids were not known to borrow anybody's boats it was also on this outing that Mrs Wy spotted another odity she thought she saw a beaver floating out in the lake and when they got closer to the beaver they realized it was not a beaver at all it was the unfortunately lifeless body of 22-year-old Todd gu what was especially odd about it though was the position of Todd's Body now normally when somebody Dr rounds they float and they float face down with most of their back shoulders and head up at the top of the water and their legs might dangle down and this is because of how the gases in your body build up and hold your upper body at the top of the water and you would especially expect this of somebody who was 60 ft out into the lake Todd was not found at the water's edge he was a good distance into the water and he was not floating the way you'd expect instead he was basically standing he was near ver in that water According to Jim the exact position he was in was that his body was near vertical and his head was kind of slumped over on his arm like this and you may be sitting here thinking well Aiden that's just an eyewitness count those are barely even admissible in court well according to documents I obtained from the mosan county sheriff's office this is very much what happened according to them Todd's Body had to be lifted to a completely floating State and was 60 ft out on the lake this tells us that his body was not in a completely floating State and that the Willies were correct about how far into the lake he was the finding of the body was first reported in newspapers so far as I can tell on July 5th 2005 3 days later and he was reported as a suspicious death now the medical examiner listed the cause of death as drowning but that's actually where the case gets weird because the manner of death is listed as undetermined as for the cause of death being drowning it seems that this conclusion was reached for two main reasons those being that Todd was found in a body of water and there was no other conceivable cause of death because Todd had no external lacerations he had no internal bleeding there was really no other way to explain how Todd might have died the only issue was that there was no water in Todd's lungs now if you drown in a body of water there will be water in your lungs there it is possible to dry drown but that's not what they were saying here they were saying Todd drowned in that Lake in which case there would be water in his l lungs there was not but while Todd may not have had water in his lungs what he did have was a blood alcohol content of 0.12% as well as a staggering amount of amitryptiline and diamine in his system both of these medications are anti-depressants I believe one is an snri and the other is an SSRI but they are not the kind that would be prescribed together Additionally the level that was in Todd's system would have rendered him unconscious he could not have walked to the lake with that much in his system he would have been on the ground sleeping and yet despite the fact that there was no water in Todd's lungs and he had so much anti-depressant in his system that he would have been rendered unconscious the police believed Todd had simply in his inebriated State accidentally gone the wrong direction and fallen into the lake and accidentally drowned this didn't really sit well with Todd's mother or with the broader community and for good reason there is a dense Thicket of thorns between where the party was and the lake now it's not impassible though it would be very difficult to get through especially if you were really drunk and on a heroic dose of anti-depressants but at the very least had Todd wearing summer clothing gone through that Thicket he would have had numerous cuts and scrapes all over his body and if he had fallen into the lake that night and drowned then those would not have healed in the 3 weeks between when he disappeared and when his body was found because his body would have been dead and if you're like oh well you know maybe it was just that you know he had a a long sleeve shirt on for some reason and that's why these were about like 2in thick Thorns that we're 2in long Thorns that we're talking about the people that have been to the site and the people who own the property both said you're not getting through there without getting cut up additionally 1,500 people as well as helicopters had searched the area and nobody had seen a body floating in the lake for that entire 21 days as if this weren't enough already to make you really question if this was an accidental drowning the night before the body was found Jim wi's brother and his nephew were out on the lake fishing and they were pretty much in the exact spot that this body was found at one point and did not see it despite there being two people who were on the lake where the body was found the night before it was found and two people on the lake who found the body none of them were interviewed by police that and and yes you heard me correctly the guy who found the body was not interviewed by the Michigan State Police in a formal setting like that's not me calling him a suspect that's me pointing out that the guy who found the body was not interviewed as part of the investigation which is a level of F that I simply can't comprehend to top all of that off Todd's Body was in remarkable condition for somebody that had been sitting in a warm lake in June for 3 weeks all of the evidence available at the time that Todd was found at the time that this autopsy was completed suggested that he did not accidentally drown despite all of that the Michigan State Police maintained that this was an accidental drowning that Todd was just drunk and wandered into the lake even as Cathy gu Todd's mother begged them to reopen the case fortunately even if the Michigan State Police wouldn't do anything that didn't mean that other people wouldn't and over time this story was spread around people started to hear about it and a former New York district attorney by the name of Trish d'angelus caught wind of it and she managed to get a forensic pathologist named Dr Michael SAR sorry Michael sakka to review the autopsy files take a look at the case and give his opinion as a medical examiner well Dr sakka took a look at the autopsy and he also didn't think that Todd had drowned so he showed it to some medical examiner and forensic pathologist colleagues of his and they also agreed that it didn't look like Todd accidentally drowned and you know that just you know three four five maybe forensic Pathologists well that's not all that many people that's not a big deal so they took it to an international medical examiner conference where over 200 medical examiners agreed it was very unlikely in fact it seemed impossible that Todd gu had accidentally drowned 200 not only did they think that Todd didn't drown they also noted that Todd's Body showed that he had only been dead for 2 to 5 days at the most when he was found in that water not the complete 3 weeks that would be required if he had drowned that night following these findings a letter was sent to the Michigan State Police which I have elected to read in its entirety as it is available online now as I said earlier in the video finding anything about this case requires using the Wayback machine so that's what I did and the only copy that I could find did have some redactions because there were some rather uh graphic parts that they decided not to include on Kathy gu's behalf that letter reads as follows Dr Sakura reviewed the autopsy report with respect to this case as well as the photos taken of Todd's Body during the recovery and autopsy Dr sakka and I have also reviewed police reports read news statements from the couple who discovered Todd's Body and discussed the case with experts in the field of water recovery in some and substance Dr sakka found several conclusive pieces of medical evidence that convince him that Todd died no more than 48 to 72 hours before his body was recovered this is not consistent with the original finding that Todd died the night he disappeared and was in AV Hall Late for 21 days for further review We consulted with experts at lifeguard systems they specialize in water rescues and recoveries and are brought in to consult on cases around the country they showed pictures of Todd's recovery to more than 200 medical examiners coroners and death investigators at an International Conference they were told that the police concluded Todd accidentally drowned and was in the water for 21 days all of these experts agreed that Todd's Body had only been in the water for a few days and not one expert believed he had been in the water more than 5 days Dr sakka and I are working on this case Pro bone if you will lend Credence to the opinions of the experts we've consulted the only conclusion is that Todd guy was alive for close to 3 weeks after he disappeared and before he was recovered We Believe very strongly that this matter should be reopened and a full investigation launched into The Disappearance and death of Todd gu the police determined that Todd accidentally drowned in Avid Hall Lake the night he was reported missing before an autopsy or toxicology report was completed they closed this case without a thorough review and without interviewing Witnesses who were clearly suspicious on beh half of Doug and Kathy gu we respectfully request that you open a new investigation into the death of their son Todd's parents and three sisters always believe there was more to this case than a simple drowning Dr sakka and I are confident the evidence strongly supports that conclusion this letter only touches on our findings information regarding this case we are available and eager to speak with you regarding this matter as our Todd's family members we can also send a copy of the autopsy report and the photos were received at your request our contact information is included herein we sincerely thank you for your time time and consideration of this important matter so in no uncertain terms the vast majority of people who have reviewed the files of this case believe the police are wrong it was strongly recommended by over 200 experts that this case be reopened and investigated as a homicide and a large part of this was the medical impossibility that Todd had been dead for more than two to 5 days when he was found in response Letter's recipient Tony tag forwarded it along to Curtis r Shon a police Lieutenant with the Michigan State Police who claimed there is nothing to indicate the death of Todd gu is anything more than an accidental drowning he also claimed that they had received no new evidence since 2005 that would suggest that Todd was the victim of a crime but obviously they had this rejection this decision not to reopen the case was apparently the result of the opinion of Dr Joyce deang the chief medical examiner from M Keegan County who I must say is either lying or terrible at her job there is tons of evidence and none of it suggests he drowned in fact the claim being made here is that Todd didn't drown there's no evidence he drowned the burden of proof is on the people claiming he drowned to prove he drowned and they didn't 3 years later in 2012 Kathy gu once again rallied for her son's case to be reinvestigated only for police Lieutenant Chris McIntyre to tell reporters we haven't been presented any new evidence at all which is a lie that is just a lie he was presented all of the new evidence in 2009 and this Dr Dang decided that it wasn't evidence I would like to right now ask Dr Dang if you're if you're still working um if this video happens to find you uh please tell me precisely how does a man drown in a lake without getting water in his lungs I'd also like to know how a man with so much deine and amitryptiline in his system that he can't possibly have been conscious walk to a lake in fact how does he make four separate phone calls how does somebody who had to crawl drunk and also probably near unconscious under the circumstances threw a Thicket of 2in long Thorns without a single laceration appearing on his body I am 100% serious you Dr Joyce Dang or anybody else who works in your department if you're still there please explain that to me I would love to hear it but since Dr Dang works for the government and is therefore not accountable uh this case was just frust tingly in limbo for several years until finally the Oxygen Network TV show the smiley face Killers The Hunt For Justice showed up and decided they were going to look at the case that's right the the state police could not be bothered to investigate what was obviously a suspicious death it had to be the Oxygen Network that did it I I just the Oxygen Network being the people to to really like go out there and go get it is probably the only thing funny than YouTubers doing it but anyway the team for that show brought in Dr Eric benbo a forensic entomologist with Michigan State University the detectives on that show who were former New York City detectives they wanted to find concrete proof that Todd's Body was not in the water for 21 days now this was in 2019 so this is pretty recent in order to prove this Dr benbo set up an experiment where he took several Pig carcasses dressed them in clothes similar to what Todd was wearing that night and stuck them into a pond that matched the conditions of avit Hall Lake and the carcasses were kept there for varying periods of time one was 24 hours one was 72 hours one was 5 days one was 10 days and one was the full 21 days and what they found was that within just 3 days aquatic insects and blowflies had colonized the pig carcasses when Todd was found there was not a single sign of an insect on his body additionally the carcass that had been in the water for 21 days was was covered in a slimy algic film a slimy algic film that was not on Todd gu now benbo did say that it was possible the body had initially sunk to a deeper point in the lake where there were fewer insects where it was colder where decomposition would take a little bit longer so this is kind of the opposite problem that we have in the case of the corpse of Brian laundry that was found in Florida Brian's corpse despite being submerged in water for 3 weeks was completely decomposed as in it was skeletal just a ER that that sick bastard and his scumbag parents as well as their uh God what's the best way to say this piece of crap lawyer still haven't answered for the pain they caused Gabby potito's family oh my God Aiden do you know what time of year it is what time of year it's time for the scumbag lawyer of the Year award oh my God and you know what for the second year in a row Steven bertolino wins oh my God Round of Applause for Steven bertolino oh my God good job man you are truly impressively awful in my opinion Archie Archie don't you agree that he's the worst lawyer in the world yes you do it's your opinion too yes yes you have four brain cells and that's even more than he has allegedly you know we have to say allegedly and in my opinion you know because of the implication in the case of Todd gu however between the 200 medical examiners and other experts who said yeah he was not dead more than two to 5 days and Eric beno's work which proved that in 2 to 5 days his body would at the very least have been ized by so many insects it was becoming very clear that this was not an accidental drowning all evidence pointed to Foul Play and yet to this day even after the Oxygen Network aired that episode the police still hold that this was an accidental drowning caused by alcohol and if it seems like I kind of skipped over or like skimmed through the smiley face Killer part don't worry we are going to cover that in a series of videos because we're kind of running out of Missing 411 case es that have actual documentation so this was good timing this is both similar to the missing 41 phenomenon the smiley face Killers Theory suggests that there are a large number of cases with similar aspects in this case there are 45 uh drownings of young men across the Midwest that they believe are connected that the police have said are just accidental drownings these deaths occurred between the years 1990 and 2019 and were identified as suspicious by former New York City Detectives Kevin Ganon and Anthony Duarte the victims are college aged males they are well-liked they are athletic they are popular they are goodlooking and they are mostly white the name the smiley face Killers comes from the fact that in about 12 of the cases there was a smiley face found either painted or stickered onto something near where the body was found in this case according to Todd's mother there was a smiley face spray painted onto a tree and a sticker of a smiley face on Todd's grave that was found several years later she also does say that there were other people who confirmed that the smiley face was there in the fall of the year he was found the reason I am phrasing it the way I am is that Todd's mother said in the interview in the TV show that she had found out about the work that Kevin Ganon Anthony Duarte were doing and that after that she found the smiley faces according to her her immediate thought was you know is somebody screwing with me is is this somebody playing some sort of sick joke but the fact that the smiley faces were there did get Ganon and Duarte out there to look at the case and really the Hallmark of these cases is that despite evidence that this may not have been simply an accident police are overly cautious or outright refuse to call these things murders and since they're having a hard time even referring to these as homicides they're obviously not going to buy into the theory that this is either some sort of organized crime or a serial killer and the FBI also seems to be of that opinion on the one hand there could very very well be no connection between any of these cases and they are all really just isolated alcohol rated accidental drownings on the other hand the police screw up all the time and in Todd gu's case they have their heads so deep in the sand they can probably taste oil now if these were actually homicides there are two leading theories for who could be behind it and those are serial killing or organized crime however in 2008 the FBI told reporters that they had not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or that these deaths are the work of a serial killer now of course the only way the FBI would be involved in these deaths is if they were either organized crime or a serial killer so it's not weird that the FBI isn't involved in the individual cases but for a playby playay of how bad the FBI is at recognizing Foul Play or at how good they are at ignoring what is obviously Foul Play please check out our video on Chuck mcculler Chuck was found in a place he cannot possibly have gotten to without snowshoes and it was so so so remote and difficult to get there that the Rangers looking for him did not even bother to check that side of the park because they didn't think anybody could get there in the same way that the FBI chalked Chuck Muller's death up to somebody somehow getting 8 mil off Trail in 9ft deep snow without snowshoes and then dying of exposure they chalk most of the smiley face Killers cases up to Accidental drowning but Todd didn't drown accidentally in fact he didn't drown at all so let's go over the evidence the last people to have seen Todd appear to have seen him leaving the party headed toward White Road he said he was in a field at 12:51 and directly south of the party there was a field between him and White Road and dogs tracked him from the orchard party to White Road and East to M37 Todd's Trail inexplicably stops at M37 but dogs are not 100% reliable nevertheless there is a dense Thicket of thorn bushes north of where the party was between Todd and the lake so all of the evidence suggests that Todd headed south now another explanation for the scent Trail could be that Todd was actually dropped off for the party at the intersection of M37 and white road but between the terrain the witnesses the phone calls it seems very unlikely that Todd would have gone north towards avit Hall Lake in fact given that he had no scratches on him it's impossible when his body was found there was no evidence that he had been dead for more than 5 days in fact all of the evidence pointed towards him having been dead for less than three his body also showed no signs of insect activity or significant algae growth which would be expected after 21 days in the water this was confirmed by those 200 experts and reinforced by Dr Eric beno's study the concentration of drugs in his system would have rendered him unable to walk and therefore he cannot have had that many drugs in his system while he was at the party if he somehow had walked in a drugged drunken days through that Thicket of thorn bushes he would have been covered in lacerations so it seems to me that sometime after making his last call at 12:57 a.m. on June 12th 2005 Todd gu was kidnapped by Persons Unknown held for 15 to 20 days drugged and then put into the lake he also was found with a blood alcohol content 1.5 times the legal limit for driving which when interacting with those anti-depressants could have and likely would have caused him to stop breathing and while you may be thinking well couldn't he have just taken the drugs himself couldn't he have just been partying well that's the interesting thing about the drugs he was on they're not like party drugs they these are ssris and snris they don't make you high pharmacists confirmed this these drugs are also not prescribed together and Todd had not been prescribed either drug when he disappeared this means he did not take these pills to get high drink too much and then pass out and fall into the lake Todd must have been slipped the drugs and then forced to drink either by his as salent or possibly as salance the reason I say as salance is because since these medications aren't prescribed together then if this was simply somebody's own stash there would have had to be two of them there would have had to be somebody who had a prescription for amitryptiline and somebody who had a prescription for diamine alternatively the culprit could have had access to pharmaceutical drugs through their job possibly a pharmacy tech a nurse a physician's assistant or even a doctor this person would have waited for Todd to leave the party snagged him when he got to noo Road and then held him for the remainder of the time before choosing to end his life when it was time to get rid of him the asant or asants would have forced him to drink an amount of alcohol that would have put him similar to where he was after the party drugged him and then put him into the lake most likely believing that he would inhale water as he breathed and drowned this likely would have been done to make it seem like an accidental drowning as a result of alcohol when in reality it was a homicide I believe that the problem here was that the amount of drugs they gave Todd coupled with the alcohol they made him drink caused him to die before he went into the water hence why there was no water in his lungs to cover their tracks they stole the canoe and filled it with beer cans to make it seem like Todd had stolen the canoe drunk himself into a stoer and fallen into the water while any given Medical Professional would probably know what cocktail of medications to give somebody to end their life they wouldn't necessarily know how long the process of decomposition takes hence the the flaw in their otherwise pretty wellth thought out murder plan and yet still there are some things that are unaccounted for one of which is the fact that Todd told a female acquaintance that he was lost White Road is less than a quarter mile from where the party was and even if Todd were decently drunk leaving the party he should have had a very easy time finding it and of course the only scent Trail they found LED East to M37 we also have to wonder how the perpetrator knew that Todd left the party when he did and how he knew Todd Todd left the party alone Todd arrived at the party with friends so nobody without being there with him could reasonably expect to know that he would leave by himself or even when he would leave which brings up a pretty big question why Todd was Todd actually the Target or was this simply an opportunistic killing if Todd was the intended victim then whoever did it would have known Todd's movements well enough to know he was at the party and to know when he left the party which means that they either have to have been there or they have to have been coordinating with somebody who was on the inside and if Todd wasn't the target then what was the motivation and why keep him alive for nearly 3 weeks without so much as a ransom note there might be an explanation if Todd had any injuries on his body but he didn't it seems like whoever kept him kept him wellfed kept him comfortable and did not harm him for the full time they had him unfortunately we're not going to get any of those answers about Todd gu's case until the Michigan State Police are shamed into getting off of their asses to investigate what is obviously a homicide and as for the smiley face Killers I guess we have our new Missing 411 and I do realize it seems like I may repeat myself a lot in this video or when I'm covering these cases that's because I really do want to make sure you guys have all the details and that you have them fresh in your minds as we're going through I don't want this to be the kind of thing where you're going wait how did we get here why do we have that conclusion you know I I want you to understand my thought process and if you see flaws in it Point them out because that's the only way that we can get better is if you guys help us and another way that you can help us is by subscribing to our patreon for just $1 a month there are higher tiers but we don't ask for more you can also become a member here on YouTube that's $5 a month and it doesn't come with any of the fun perks but you know you do get a free Super Chat every month we also have several other channels only really one of which is consistently getting new content right now but we're working on it those are the lore Lounge the history Hut the weird Bible and my channel the Aiden Ms you can also check out our merch at the lodge. shop where you can feel like you're wearing our skin or you can check out our Discord at bit. l/j jointhe lodge and if you want to catch these kinds of conversations or ask questions in the Q&A session we have our live podcast here on YouTube every Sunday night around 700 p.m. it's football season so things are a little weird right now but you can come and you can ask questions there and if you can't catch it live but you do want to hear the conversation you can always catch those on Spotify Google podcast Apple podcast Amazon podcast really anywhere you get podcasts and of course we would love to thank our partner for this video Factor it is a service that we actually use we actually do enjoy them and we really hope you try it out all of that out of the way I am Aiden Mattis and thank you for stopping by the L [Music] LOD

Channel: The Lore Lodge

Views: 374,328

Keywords: the lore lodge, lore, folklore, history, culture, education, entertainment, social studies, humanities, anthropology, aidan mattis, smiley face killers, smiley face killers oxygen, smiley face killers theory, smiley face killer theory, crime documentary, smiley face killer, missing 411 documentary, missing 411 stories, missing 411 cases, missing 411 lore lodge, missing 411, todd geib documentary, todd geib case, todd geib missing, todd geib

Id: 7inXxQESDRs

Length: 49min 57sec (2997 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 10 2023