Who Killed Josh Guimond?
The disappearance of 20-year-old Joshua Guimond from the campus of St. John’s University one cold Minnesota night in November of 2002 has been very much on people’s minds lately. This resurgence of interest in a very cold case is undoubtedly due to a recent episode of Unsolved Mysteries which aired on Netflix. It’s twenty long years now that his family and loved ones have gone without an answer. That is a punishing stretch of time.
This case has often been portrayed as one that is wholly baffling, similar to the disappearance of Jason Jolkowski in Omaha in 2001. Admittedly, Jolkowski’s disappearance is one of the most mystifying. But I don’t think the comparison is particularly apt since there are actually many more facts available to scrutinize in the disappearance of Josh Guimond. There is a very strong and detailed timeline in Guimond’s disappearance which I think is vital in helping one think about what most likely happened that night. This well-sourced timeline is invaluable.
My first theory to explain this disappearance would have been exactly what the first theory of law enforcement was. It is horribly common and tragic that young men who attempt to walk home or somewhere else in the darkness after a night of drinking end up drowned in nearby bodies of water. Sometimes they are found quickly, sometimes after an excruciating interval. Studies have been done on this that looked at the various reasons this occurs. Sometimes it is a matter of someone seeking to urinate and tumbling in. Sometimes the water might be a pleasant place for reflection (for example, sitting on a bridge with legs dangling) where an accidental tumble could occur. Sometimes it might just be the darkness where the visual field obscures the dividing line between dark land and dark water.
I give absolutely zero credence to the idea that there is a “Smiley Face Killer” or smiley face killer cult across America. It’s so easy to find graffiti that includes a smiley face on structures near bodies of water or anywhere else. It’s just a very easy design to make and it’s basically everywhere. This is clearly nothing more than a baseless urban legend that appeals to mostly younger people who like to tell stories to spook their friends.
I said I would have given credence to that drowning scenario to explain Joshua’s disappearance. He did go right by two adjoining lakes on his way home from the late night card game. One of them had a depth of thirty-six feet. It would be easy for a body to remain hidden in there. The last sighting places him apparently heading back to his own apartment in St. Maur House, usually described as a mere three minute walk from the Metten Court dormitory on campus where Josh had stopped in for a late night card game. Here’s another breakdown of Joshua’s trek on that night. I think it’s of particular interest that there is no record that he used his computerized key card to open the door to his apartment. This could mean that someone else opened the door for him, perhaps another student he had allowed to use his computer. Or could he possibly have left his door open or ajar when he had last left it? One other thing I have wondered about is whether the time registered on the key cards was accurate time. These could have been off. One wonders how they synched up to establish time. Daylight savings time had recently ended in late October of 2002. Did this adjustment have to be made manually to the system or did it synch with some system which auto-updated? I just feel the greatest likelihood is that the person listening to Josh’s music playlist and forwarding over certain songs was Josh himself. I’m not so convinced that just because he didn’t card in that he did not return directly to his apartment. If so, this changes everything.
Joshua had allegedly consumed ten beers in perhaps six hours. This might be enough to severely alter his mood and perception. It depends on the drinker, his constitution, his previous experience with alcohol and other factors. But it could have heightened his aggression and here we have to consider the report of a loud confrontation with his roommate Nick Hydukovich the previous night, which was described by another Maur House dorm resident. Could this argument have been related to Nick’s attempt to date Josh’s ex-girlfriend, a resident of nearby sister college St. Benedict’s? Indeed, Nick was hanging out with Katie Benson the very night Josh disappeared. This date was one night after their confrontation overheard by others. Most troubling of all is not that Nick refused to take a polygraph test but rather that there has always remained that unexplained gap in the timeline he gave police as opposed to that given by Katie. This difference of accounting in their two timelines is almost two hours. Or perhaps it is even more if the key card time clock was off.
In the timeline there remains that confusing mote to trouble the mind’s eye. Who was in Josh’s dorm room listening to music and skipping songs from 11:52 to 12:32? What reason do we have to believe that it was anyone other than Josh himself? Could it be that the timeline is slightly off and Joshua left the party a few minutes earlier than people had speculated? It’s only a difference of like eleven minutes really. I think this is entirely probable. People could easily have been off by that slight bit of time in estimating when Josh slipped out of the Metten Court gathering. I think it’s likely it was actually Josh back in his dorm room listening to music. One wonders whether students residing there at the time remember any unreliability about this system or remember doors being left open sometimes.
From The Cinemaholic’s discussion of the Unsolved Mysteries episode: “As per the show, Nick said he left Katie’s home at around 2:30 am on November 10, and his keycard was used at 2:42 am. However, Katie mentioned that Nick left around 1 am or 1:30 am. Since the drive was only about 7–10 minutes, the authorities believed there was time unaccounted for.” This discrepancy in time is extremely disturbing. This is not something someone would be likely to be confused about when such a critical event as a disappearance occurs. This would all be fresh recall at the time.
Let’s say the following is fiction. I am making no accusations but imaging a scenario. Had Nick returned to the dorm room he shared with Josh in a manner consistent with the timeline Katie Benson had given, rather than the one he gave law enforcement, he could have been let in without using his card. Because Josh very well might have been on the other side of that door. If something violent had happened in the dorm room that night after Nick’s date with Josh’s ex-girlfriend, Josh’s body could have been permanently disposed of, or perhaps temporarily placed in a vehicle, say the trunk of a car. The 2:42 A.M. key-in by Nick could have been a second entry into the shared apartment. A body could have been disposed of that night or even the next morning or sometime that next day with leisure. A body could have rested in the trunk of someone’s vehicle. This would require the roommate to have a vehicle, of course. But from the quote given above, we know Nick drove to Katie’s. He had a vehicle on campus. It is unlikely Josh’s car was used to dispose of his own body since people seemed to think it had not been moved. Or had it? There would have been access to the car keys. How observant are people really about this sort of thing when you don’t have security cameras to confirm anything? But most likely a killer would use his own vehicle to dispose of a body.
Maybe Josh did go into one of those lakes and he was missed in the many searches. But I don’t think so. If this was a river, my answer might be different. Some rivers don’t give up their bodies easily and work havoc on remains. (I still believe Ray Gricar went into the Susquehanna River, for example, and his remains just were never found and won’t be.) There were so many searches of the campus lakes and the water level was even lowered. There was so much sonar searching. Lake Stumpf was dragged. The slough on campus grounds was adequately searched and all the surrounding woods. His remains have never turned up in twenty years. This has led most speculators to believe that Josh was murdered and his body removed. I agree.
I think the online conversations Josh Guimond had with people of both sexes are a red herring. Most of those people were probably located far away from him. And, more importantly, we have his online activity from the day of his disappearance and absolutely none of that looks like he was attempting to set up a hookup for the night of November 9th, 2002. He was checking movies and other trivial distractions. He appeared set to spend a typical Saturday night on campus just looking for some easy distraction. I don’t put much stock in thinking Joshua’s sexuality had anything to do with his disappearance. His female online personas could have been mere trolling, fishing for photos as trophies. Lots of young guys would create female identities on Yahoo back in those days to have fun at the expense of other horny males or to appear “safer” for females to chat with and share confidences. This is typical college dude stuff for that time. Or perhaps he was exploring his own sexuality. It doesn’t matter because I don’t think that had one whit to do with his disappearance.
Similarly, I put no stock in the monks of St. John’s having anything to do with Josh’s disappearance. Yes, I realize there were monks who were sexual predators on this campus abusing their positions who needed to be held legally accountable and many of them were. But none of them were killing kids and no other kids disappeared. This is another red herring.
It’s a statistical fact that most victims of homicide are killed by someone they knew and not a stranger. I have seen some reports placing this figure (which varies year to year) at 80%. The figures for 2021 homicides still reflect this tendency with a large skew towards murder committed by known acquaintance or intimate. So there would be at least a four out of five chance that Josh knew his killer.
I would consider it a possibility that Josh might have mixed drugs with alcohol at the party in question or immediately after leaving that gathering and possibly overdosed. I could see someone panicking and perhaps disposing of his body. But there is less evidence leading me that direction than the direction closer to home (his dorm room). One could see if there were any suspicious 911 calls that night, perhaps hang ups, if such records exist. This might point to an overdose post-party.
But what if we entertain the possibility that Josh made it back to his dorm and that something happened there in the middle of the night? In that scenario, I think the alcohol might have played a part in it. The drinking could have continued after his exit from the party. Certainly any violence that might have occurred in this imaginary scenario would not have been something planned. Again, please understand that I am merely speculating based on what I think are probabilities and what one sees in previous crimes. It’s interesting that the person who pointed a blaming finger at the monks of St. John’s and who said (without any corroborating evidence) that Josh was engaged in investigating the abuse perpetrated by those monks is the one with the suspicious timeline for the night of Josh’s disappearance. These are just facts. I am not accusing anyone of anything. You can draw your own conclusions from these facts that are in the public record.
I don’t put much stock in the scent trails the various dogs hit on. They are contradictory and if the “hit” near the lake is the most reliable (allegedly) then Josh should have been found in one of those adjoining lakes. I don’t believe Josh got into a vehicle there. That would be a very weird pickup point. And the thing people forget with these scent searches is that Josh had been all over that campus every day. The dogs can’t isolate his scent from just one night. So I don’t put much stock in them hitting anywhere, actually. I don’t believe a gang or individual just happened to target him and tossed him into an “orange Pontiac Sunfire” or any other vehicle. I think people are overthinking this case and are being drawn to the more dramatic, conspiracy-laden type scenarios. The more prosaic type of murder is the likelier occurrence, especially when alcohol and conflicting romantic interests are involved. It is interesting that Nick made little of Josh not being in his bed the next morning. Wasn’t this extremely atypical? Why was his disappearance not seen as a troubling thing until later in the afternoon of the next day when a group of several students decided to report it?
Josh did leave the late night card game insanely fast. He allegedly arrived there at 11:30 pm and was gone by midnight or before. That’s hardly time to get situated in a poker game. And attending that party at all doesn’t really fit in with the idea that he was planning on meeting someone for something as monumentally out of character as a hookup with a man. If that were the case, he would probably have been keeping to himself and secretive. It seems more as though he were emotionally upset about something and thought the party would be a good distraction but found himself unable to concentrate on that card game. I think he returned to his dormitory to dwell on that in solitude and was trying to use music to soothe his emotions.
It’s a shame vehicles weren’t examined very closely following Josh’s disappearance, his own and those of other principals in this case. I am not accusing anyone of anything here. I would just state that the four most troubling elements of this disappearance to me are that Nick’s timeline was severely off, Nick argued heatedly with Joshua the night before his disappearance, Nick pointed a finger at the monks of St. John’s abbey and asserted that Joshua was investigating them (when there was never any corroborating evidence for this) and Nick refused to take a polygraph test. The last is the least worrisome fact but still a significant fact.
Nick is now a successful attorney. Joshua Guimond is almost certainly dead. We can certainly imagine many possibilities for Joshua’s disappearance. Extremely unlikely events and crimes do occur. Consider that this has been an exercise in imagination, fictional scenarios, and certainly not any sort of accusation. In any disappearance, we have to look at facts first. Speculation is merely that. But sometimes facts and probabilities work together to make us believe certain things. They work together to draw a certain picture that it is hard to erase from one’s mind. A strong picture etches itself in my mind with the facts we are given here. I have no absolute proof to back that up, so it remains pure speculation.
