by Dennis Dalman
The search for the cause of Joshua Guimond’s baffling disappearance nearly 20 years ago continues via a podcast series of investigations that have revealed accounts of alleged abduction attempts during that same time frame.
Guimond, a 20-year-old student and political-science major who hailed from Maple Lake, “vanished” on the night of Nov. 9, 2002 after leaving a card party at a dorm on the campus of St. John’s University.
A few months ago, a Minneapolis civil-rights attorney, Josh Newville, initiated a series of podcasts called simplyvanished.com. For years, Newville has researched other missing-person cases. He is convinced searchers/investigators at the time had missed or completely overlooked clues largely because so many were convinced Guimond had drowned in a lake or swampy area on campus. That certainty caused a kind of tunnel vision. A massive search of the entire area, including the lake, revealed nothing.
After several podcasts, a nagging question is beginning to emerge: Did Guimond leave the party that night to meet up with a person or people he might have met via Internet chat-room connections or was he abducted by one or more people in a car while walking back to his dorm?
In the latest podcast, Newville offers yet another sinister report by a college student at that time who believes he was the object of an abduction attempt in St. Joseph just weeks after Guimond’s disappearance.
After hearing one of Newville’s podcasts, the man dubbed “Jeremy” called Newville and agreed to meet him in St. Joseph so they could visit the place where the incident happened nearly two decades ago. Jeremy recounts that incident on Podcast Episode 4 (entitled “The After Party”).
The following is a summary of Jeremy’s terrifying memory. One night in late November, 2002, Jeremy, who was a student at SJU, was in a St. Joseph bar and after-party. At about 2 a.m., while walking by the baseball field (Memorial Park area), a car turned around on a road (in the vicinity of Birch Street), then the car went very slowly past Jeremy, who was walking on the right side of the road. Jeremy could see the two men in the car staring at him. About 30 to 40 yards ahead of him, the car stopped right in the middle of the driving lane; two occupants got out of the car and began to walk toward Jeremy, getting closer and closer to him.
One of the men said, “Do you know where the after-party is?”
“You mean the after-bar party?”
Jeremy pointed to the distance, but the men did not even glance in that direction. The men, steadily advancing, terrified Jeremy because he instantly knew they had sinister intentions. It was especially terrifying because Guimond had disappeared just weeks earlier.
When the men were three to four feet away, Jeremy bolted and ran as fast he could down a hill of the park to the Birch Street area. He looked back and saw the car still there, still stopped, its two doors open and lights still on. Jeremy described the vehicle as an older vehicle (late 1980 or early 90s), a dark color, a red interior and a luggage-carrying rack on the trunk. The men he described as large-bodied with scruffy facial hair.
Hiding by a tree in the dark, Jeremy noticed four men emerge from an apartment complex, standing outside and smoking cigarettes. He ran toward them and nearly collapsed from physical exhaustion and fright. They invited him into the house where they shut down the party, locked the doors and let Jeremy sleep on the couch. Next morning, one of the men drove Jeremy back to his SJU dorm. When a friend there asked him where he was all night, Jeremy burst into tears and spilled out his terrifying story.
In earlier podcasts, Newville told about two other college students who told friends of frightening incidents right about the time Guimond disappeared. One of them said four men picked him up while he was walking on the SJU campus. They offered to give him a ride, then drove him to a wooded area where they told him to perform a sexual act on the driver. The man managed to run into the woods, followed by the men who tried to overtake him. They failed.
Another man said about 20 years ago he was in a St. Joseph bar and when he left four men tried to force him into a car. He resisted and ran from the men.
Also in Episode 4 (The After Party), Newville mentions two other apparent abductions of young men in Minnesota. On April 1, 2002, an 18-year-old man named Danny Newville “disappeared” after leaving a party house near downtown New London. An anonymous tipster later said he had been murdered but gave no details. Danny Newville was not related to Josh Newville of the “simplyvanished” podcasts. There is a Facebook page called “Find Danny Newville.”
Ten days before Guimond’s disappearance, a young man named Chris Jenkins vanished in Minneapolis. His body was found later, his hands clutching at his hair.
In one of the podcasts, there is a brief mention of the “Smiley Face” killers of years ago, a reference to some male college students who were apparently tossed into waterways and drowned at various places along the I-94 corridor. The alleged killer or killers would leave “smiley-face” stickers at the scene of the alleged murders. Those suspected murders have not been solved.
If anyone has hunches or tips about Guimond’s disappearance, call Josh Newville at 612-439-3646. Or leave an email message on the “simplyvanished.com” podcast site. Click on “Contact” on the upper bar to access the email function.
There are five more podcast episodes in Season One of “simplyvanished.” They are tentatively scheduled for Mondays (Aug. 8, 15 and 29; and Sept. 12); and for Wednesday, Dec. 14.
Joshua Guimond
Patty Wetterling of St. Joseph, the mother of Jacob Wetterling who was abducted and murdered 32 years ago, recently spoke at the annual rally to “Find Danny Newville.” Newville disappeared Aug. 1, 2002 after leaving a party house in New London. For more than three decades, with her son missing for most of that time, Wetterling has actively supported efforts to find missing people or to solve such cases.
