It was standing in the middle of a lake... | Missing 411 (Part 9)

if i told you that a college-age male went out drinking with his buddies and then wound up dead in a river you might suspect that he got drunk and fell in accidental drowning but what if i told you that there were dozens and dozens of these college age males that are going out drinking with their buddies and then being found dead in rivers and they're all being labeled accidental drownings except many of them are found with little to no water in their lungs and forensics tell us that they were actually alive for several hours days even months after the night out with their friends one former police detective named david politis who normally researches missing people in parks and forests has begun researching these strange accidental drownings all over north america in his book called a sobering coincidence as part of his missing 4-1-1 book series today i'm going to share with you three cases that have all been covered by david politis but before we get into today's stories if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format and you come to the right place because that's all i do and i upload three four even five times every week so that's of interest to you then i would encourage you to slightly overcook the like buttons popcorn and subscribe to this channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of my weekly uploads alright let's get into today's stories in 2005 todd guide was 22 years old he lived in michigan he was an avid outdoorsman he liked to go deer hunting he loved to catch trophy fish and he loved his family and routinely after he moved out of the house he would drive on the weekends the five miles north to his parents house would spend lots of time with his parents and his extended family on june 11 2005 todd was visiting his parents at their house he was there for dinner and after dinner he went back to his house he checked in with his roommate who was actually his cousin and then following that he drove to a local bar to get a few drinks at about 9 30 that night he decides to leave the bar and walk to this big orchard where there was this huge annual keg party that he and his friends would go to he leaves his car at the bar and he walks to this orchard and it's perfect weather all of his friends are there he's having this great time and he's there all the way until midnight it was getting late todd felt tired so he told a couple of his friends that he was gonna head home he was going to leave his car at the bar and he was just going to walk back to his house the area that this orchard was in was right near his home and so he knew this area extremely well and it was only about a mile south to walk to his house so all of his friends said bye to him they said he seemed totally normal they watched him walk south towards his house and that was the last anybody saw of him on his walk home todd would make four phone calls to friends and to family and the last one he made was at about 12 45 in the morning and it was to his friends and he told them that he was in a field and he couldn't breathe and they kept asking him like what are you talking about and all they heard was very heavy breathing on the phone they couldn't tell if it was his or if someone else had taken the phone and was now breathing into it but then the phone cuts out and they tried calling him back and there was no answer they couldn't get in touch with him the next day when todd did not show up at a family get-together something he never would have missed unless he told them ahead of time his family knew something was wrong plus they had those strange phone calls the night before they checked in with his friends they said yeah we haven't heard from him they went over to his house he wasn't there and so that's when they called the police a massive search has kicked off involving canines and helicopters and they're not finding anything three weeks after todd had gone missing a couple was walking around this lake that was located north of the orchard where todd was at that big keg party and the wife looked out into the water and she said she thought she saw something bobbing she couldn't tell what it was but it was just this weird object that stood out to her and she and her partner walked down to the edge of the lake and they looked out and at first she thought it was a person who was swimming just kind of bobbing up and down because their body position was such that their shoulders and head were totally out of the water and so it was a strange sight and they knew that it didn't seem right so they called the police police show up and it turns out that this person was todd guy and they were deceased when searchers found out that it was todd guyb in the lake their reaction was no way we have witnesses saying he was walking south after he left the keg party why is he in a lake way to the north of the keg party it's in the complete opposite direction also investigators were baffled at his body position because if he was a drowning victim you would expect him to be face down in the water as most drowning victims are but for him to be upright shoulders out of the water it's it doesn't make any sense unless there's ice in the water to kind of prop him up and there wasn't any ice in the water his toxicology report showed that in addition to alcohol in his system he had a very high dose of an antidepressant something that he wasn't prescribed and he didn't have any history of mental illness and had never been prescribed any antidepressant in his life his body was pristine it did not have any of the hallmarks the bloating you would expect from being in water for 21 days in fact it was concluded that it was impossible for his body to have been in the water for all 21 days that he had been missing his autopsy showed that he had almost no water in his lungs even though his death was classified as an accidental drowning when the news broke that this was an accidental drowning the family and friends pushed for a closer examination of this case because it wasn't adding up and so a noted pathologist looked at all the evidence and determined that at most todd had been in the water for maybe three days and he had almost certainly been deceased when he was placed in the water which is why there wasn't any water in his lungs and it's potentially why he was in that position that he was in that upright position so as you'll see in all of these cases why are we calling it an accidental drowning still and where was todd from the day he went missing for those 15 to 17 days before he was placed in the water and what did he mean when he was on the phone the night he went missing and said he was in a field and couldn't breathe and what was all that breathing in the background lots of questions on this one on january 25th 2017 23 year old dakota james was out bar hopping in pittsburgh pennsylvania with some buddies at some point he was tired and so he decided to walk home a cctv camera has a clear shot of dakota james after he left the bar walking through a plaza he's on his phone no one seems to be following him he seems like he's okay he's not stumbling as he makes his way home the next day when he didn't show up for work that was so out of character for him that his work immediately called the police notified his parents and this massive searches launch but unfortunately nothing turns up 40 days after he had gone missing his body was found in the ohio river 10 miles away from where he had been missing and the general theory became when he was walking home after that cctv camera picked him up he must have stopped by the water to relieve himself fell in the water was so cold at the time that he would have gone into shock and then basically been doomed and then he drifted 10 miles to this location but there's a couple big issues with that number one in order to get from where he went missing to where he wound up he would have had to go through this dam and the dam is this very violent section of water where if a body were to go through there it would get ripped to pieces but when they found his body it was clear he had not gone through a dam in fact his body was pristine it looked like he hadn't been in the water for very long at all despite 40 days elapsing since he had gone missing when his toxicology report came back he had alcohol in his system as well as a high level of ghb which is a very powerful sedative and like you'll see in many of these cases he had no water in his lungs but this was ruled an accidental drowning the family was unwilling to accept that as a cause of death so they went out and hired a world-renowned forensic pathologist named dr wecht to come in and analyze all of the evidence look at the autopsy report and try to see if there's anything that was missed and what dr wecht finds is on dakota's neck there were ligature marks as if rope or some sort of twine had been wrapped around his neck which was later disputed by the other medical examiner who said that was dried blood but dr wecht swears there was ligature marks on his neck dr wecht also concluded that there was absolutely no way based on decomposition levels that dakota was in the water for more than a couple of days and he believed that he was dead or unconscious when he actually went into the water which is why there was no water in his lungs so it begs the question if we believe dr wecht where was dakota from the day he went missing until 37 days later when he apparently went into the water and again why are we calling this an accidental drowning when he didn't drown [Music] lucas holman was an incredible athlete six foot three incredible baseball football and basketball which was his primary love in fact he was so good in high school that he was recruited to play at a division one program the university of wisconsin and in fact he got a scholarship to play there so he went to the university of wisconsin when he wasn't getting much playing time there he opted to transfer early on in his career to lacrosse which was a division three school but he figured he could get more playing time that way it was at this time that he realized you know what i'm probably not going to play basketball professionally and so he began orchestrating his life towards a career in finance and in fact was telling his family that once he graduated school he was actually going to get a master's degree in business at the university of wisconsin on september 29th lucas and his friends are at this huge german festival drinking a ton of beer having a great time at some point in the night they transition to some of the bars downtown and they're all having a great time it's very crowded but at some point in the night lucas disappears no one knows where he went or who he was with but lucas was a big confident guy they figured you know what's the worst that could happen to him i'm sure he's fine and so his friends ultimately just go home and don't think much of it the next day when no one could get in touch with lucas his friends and family called the police and said you've got to look into this we don't know where he is the police went to the strip of bars that they had been bar hopping between and they asked to see the security footage from the night before and in a very unfortunate coincidence all of these bars their cameras were down so they weren't able to get a glimpse of where potentially lucas might have gone at one point someone came forward and said that they knew where he was and that they had spent time with him outside of the bar but it would later turn out that that person was lying and they were actually charged with submitting false information to the police on the 2nd of october divers located lucas's body he was in 10 feet of water about 20 feet from the edge when they pulled him out he didn't have any significant scratches or marks on his body to indicate some sort of altercation it just looked like he had fallen in the water and drowned and so his death was quickly ruled and accidental drowning the initial medical report said that lucas had fallen in the water and had been there for about 24 hours before he was found but upon closer examination it was determined that he had only been in there for maybe 8 to 12 hours so he's only been in the water for a few hours meaning there had been at least a few days where he was not in the water and was alive in the toxicology report it showed that he had a high level of alcohol in his system as well as like dakota james a high level of this sedative called ghb also it was noted that his belt buckle had been tightened way tighter than he normally wore it and some people speculated that it looked as if someone else had tried to dress him maybe after he was deceased or when he was unconscious and then perhaps the strangest part of the case is the day after lucas had gone missing his roommate who had been in the room the whole time that lucas and his friends have been out at october fast and going to the bars he'd been home the whole time he goes to bed and wakes up to an alarm but it's not his alarm it's lucas's alarm it's his phone going off that's underneath lucas's bed lucas definitely had his phone while he was out but somehow his phone got under his bed but lucas was not there and had never been there in the night unless he managed to sneak into the room without waking up his roommate and place his phone under the bed and then leave again it didn't make any sense police would never subpoena the phone's records to find out where it went that night so we're left wondering how in the heck it got under his bed if he was never in there and like all the other accidental drowning cases that we're looking at where was lucas from the time he went missing on the 29th of september and then wound up in the water at some point on the 2nd of october he was alive for those few days and he wasn't in the water so where was he some people say that these accidental drownings and all the others that are going on these suspicious accidental drownings are actually the result of a group of serial killers known as the smiley faced killers who leave smiley faces around the area where bodies are discovered that's still very much up for debate other people say that there could be something paranormal going on or this really is just a case of some drunk college kids slipping into the water and drowning but it's up to you to decide what you think is going on i'd love to hear in the comments what you think and i'll get back to all the early commenters so get in there and let me know what you think if you enjoyed this video and you want to see more like it and you haven't done this already please slightly overcook the like buttons popcorn and subscribe to my channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of my weekly 3 4 even 5 video uploads if you want to learn more about these accidental drownings you gotta check out david politis book called a sobering coincidence it's part of his missing 4-1-1 series i have a link to where you can purchase those books in the description if you have a story suggestion i would ask that you submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below i look on there every single day and if i see a story that i like i will use it and i will credit you if i intentionally use your idea if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram my username is johnballen416. i also just started using twitter my username over there is also johnvalin416. i'm also very active on tiktok where my username is mr ballen so whether i see you on reddit instagram twitter tik tok youtube some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time guys see ya

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 1,123,099

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Id: idNX6Dm6li8

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2020