College student missing; Mississippi search possible

College student missing; Mississippi search possible

www.lacrossetribune.com

Authorities will discuss today whether to search the Mississippi River for a missing 21-year-old La Crosse student after police investigators found a set of footprints on its icy surface.

Craig J. Meyers, a student at Western Technical College studying criminal justice, has been missing since 2 a.m. Sunday when his cousin dropped him off on the 700 block of Market Street, according to La Crosse police.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I live in the area, and every time this gets brought up, I find it hard to look at the situation rationally. If you read the article, we will see that this is not an unusual occurence. I used to believe this was nothing more than extremely drunk college kids making stupid decisions. But I do not know if I can buy that anymore. All are males, all college age, all with friends. This one is especially weird since he was dropped off well away from the river (I will link maps later to show the distance).

There as been plenty of speculation in the community follow the last couple dissappearances/drownings that a serial killer was responsible. I used to laugh at these ideas. I thought it was nothing more than parents/relatives/friends being unable to accept that there child had drank way more than they should have, and died as a result of their poor decision.

I began dating a girl from the Washington DC area. She is a biology major aspiring to be a forensic scientist for the fbi (not those kiddy CSI shows have you). I asked her what she thought, since she wasn't from the area and wouldn't likely be biased on the subject and because part of her forensic training has been serial killers and profiling.

She said a serial killer shouldn't be ruled out because all the victims have similar characteristics. And she also said that this may be one of the few cases of a female (or a pair of females) doing the killing. One of her main reasons for thinking this is the victims all being male. She had other reasons but this was back in August that we had talked. I asked her to read the paper this morning as I was leaving for work, so I plan to talk to her more about it when I get off.

Does anyone else here have any thoughts on this?

www.lacrossetribune.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Police dogs were able to track his scent to a gas station 3-4 blocks away from where he was dropped off by his cousin. But then the trail goes cold. They have a debit card transaction at 2:30 that morning for some downloaded music, but those close to him say he does not purchase music off the internet. I can't imagine how the cousin who dropped him off is feeling at this moment. I was taught to watch the person you drop off enter their residence before leaving just as a courtesy thing. It's too easy to have forgotten the key and be locked out, and if your ride takes off as soon as you hop out the car, you could be out of luck if its after dark.

No one is interested in a possible serial killer at ATS?

I'm down with it.

If his debit card shows someone downloaded music at 2:30 a.m. and he was dropped off at 1:50 a.m., then there is reason to be concerned that he could have been the victim of foul play, depending upon where the music was downloaded from. Once that's established, then they will have to investigate that end to determine if it's someone he knows. However, footprints leading to the icy water (only one set it appears), is not a good thing and they are gonna have to find a way to search the water in order to rule that out as his fate since it sounds like it's near the area where he was left (wasn't it?) There really isn't enough known at this point. Barring any other new evidence, their focus will probably be on trying to search the lake if they can. The search would eventually wind up there anyway without the footprints if he remains missing.

With other potential victims of foul play, I'm assuming you are referring to some of the guys mentioned in the article that have been found previously? If so, the article says there were no indicators of foul play or cause of death other than drowning, I think a serial killer is unlikely. Those blood alcohol levels on those other drowning victims were pretty high; I mean one of them was .42--that alone is high enough to kill a person.

However, the debit card activity with this new guy is suspicious. It'll be interesting to see what else comes up. Do you know anything else about him or these other guys?

Keep us updated!