Searching the River for John Dwyer

John Dwyer, 23, has been missing from Wisconsin for roughly a week and, as has now become customary for lads like him who vanish in winter without a trace, officials are searching for Dwyer's body in the river.

The La Crosse native disappeared while celebrating a birthday with his buddies in downtown Wisconsin Dells on Saturday evening. According to eye witnesses, he was last seen alive very early Sunday morning standing outside one of the local bars there.

Investigators say Dwyer and a half-dozen friends had earlier reserved two rooms in the nearby Finch Motel, and Wisconsin Dells Police Chief Jody Ward told reporters that, after their festivities came to a close, the youth was observed "walking north on River Road."

If true, this would've had him heading back to those same lodgings, albeit alone.

A cab driver who claims he drove John Dwyer and pals around town for most of the night says nothing unusual happened, and even remembered thinking the redhead was "a happy-go-lucky kid."

The young man was wearing a green flannel shirt, jeans, and an Oregon Ducks cap when he went missing. He's approximately six-feet tall and 175 pounds, and has short, red hair.

Anyone with any information about what may have happened to him or his current whereabouts is asked to call the Wisconsin Dells Police Department at 608-253-1611. 

(This case is developing -- please feel free to discuss it, or to add more info, in the comment section.)

Eponymous Rox

Missing in Michigan - Ken Gruno

Ken Gruno went mysteriously missing in Michigan on the evening of December 27th 2014, after stepping outside a pub for a breath of fresh air. The 27-year-old left behind his coat and credit card, and a group of bewildered mates.

Since Gruno's unexplained disappearance, family, friends and police have conducted numerous searches of the neighborhood and even the nearby riverbanks.

Now, however, bad weather and subzero temperatures are seriously hampering their efforts to find the missing man, and the major search which was to be launched today has had to be postponed for fear that participants may be harmed in the process.

Ken Gruno was celebrating the holidays with friends at the Otisville Hotel bar in the 100 block of West Main Street in northern Genesee County, where he appears to have somehow completely dematerialized -- he has not been seen or heard from since that night.

"It's completely out of his character," say those who know him best. "He's always in contact with someone, or on his computer." 

Gruno is approximately 6-feet tall and 175 pounds. He was wearing blue jeans, a gray flannel shirt with a vest and bowtie, and slip-on work boots. Anyone with information regarding his bizarre disappearance is asked to call the Michigan State Police Flint post at 810-732-1111.

Eponymous Rox

Shane Montgomery Accidentally Drowned - In Winter

Shane Montgomery accidentally drowned in a river, claims the medical examiner who just performed an autopsy on the previously-missing youth's corpse. Now the question that will forever remain unanswered is: Why in the world would he have gone swimming in the middle of winter?

With that weird official finding, however, Montgomery now joins a growing list of similar young men who, since the late 1990s, fatefully and fatally decided to do the same foolish thing.

Some were "intoxicated" or "on drugs" or "troubled" authorities have routinely ruled. But some were not, and yet they too disappeared and drowned anyway, including those who "misdialed" 911 in the minutes before they vanished without a trace.

Like many of the victims before him, Shane Montgomery mysteriously went missing after an altercation in a bar he had attended with friends this holiday season. It was a minor incident, the bar's owner and management now admit, but, whatever, it got him promptly thrown out into the cold that night, and thereafter he was never seen alive again.

More than a week into the community-search for him, police insisted they'd discovered surveillance video of Montgomery subsequently "stumbling" near the towpath of a nearby canal; vital evidence which, for some unknown reason, wasn't released to the public.

But this apparently rare piece of secret film footage helped to *connect all the dots* it seems. And therefore it made perfect sense to them to then assume they'd find Montgomery's corpse in the river or canal. With no signs of foul play on it, naturally.

So, who knows, perhaps young men these days are just more sensitive than they were 20, 50, 100, 200 years ago, and thus now become truly despondent whenever they're forcibly separated from their buddies, and a river, lake, pond or stream is close by... 

Eponymous Rox

Maimed and Missing: Paul Kochu

Paul Kochu went to Smokey Joe's in Pittsburgh PA with his roommates on the evening of December 16, 2014. He has not been seen or heard from since.

An image of the 22-year-old intensive care nurse was captured that same night showing him on foot and apparently alone. Wherever Kochu was headed though, he never got there.

Family members who viewed that surveillance tape said the young man's hand appeared to be wrapped in a towel and his gait was strange. They worry Kochu may also have sustained a head injury during a night out that has now become a total mystery.

His roommates contend that Kochu left the packed bar without them around midnight, but later called there to report he'd sliced his hand on broken glass. The two then allegedly returned to the apartment they share so to assist their friend with a cut they describe as "not bad enough to require him to go to the hospital for stitches."

Thereafter they went out once more, they say -- this time leaving Kochu behind -- to see if they could get some food, but he was "gone" by the time they got back. The missing man had taken his keys, cell phone and wallet with him, but not his vehicle.

Kochu recently graduated from the nursing program at Duquesne University and works in the intensive care unit at Allegheny General Hospital,. He did not show up for his scheduled morning shift on December 18th, something which his father, Jack Kochu, insists is highly unusual and troubling.

"It is 199-percent uncharacteristic of Paul not to be where he was supposed to be," he said. "He's wanted to be a nurse the last six years. There is absolutely, positively, no way he would miss work."

"He is not impetuous, he's not a reckless person," Kochu's mother, Ellen added. "And there's no rhyme or reason to how or why he disappeared that night."

Paul Kochu, 22, is approximately 6-feet tall and 180 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. Anyone with information is asked to call the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Missing Persons Unit at (412) 323-7141. A $20,000 reward is additionally being offered for help in solving his case. 

Eponymous Rox

Shane Montgomery Missing: Presumed Drowned

The search for missing student Shane Montgomery has focused on the river and canal. Like other Smiley Face Killer victims who vanished after a late night mid-winter encounter with heavy-handed police, and/or bouncers, he too was instantly presumed to have "somehow" drowned:

Montgomery disappeared in Philadelphia over the Thanksgiving holiday immediately after an over-zealous bouncer unceremoniously ejected the youth from the bar he and his friends were celebrating at.

It is the same district that Carlesha Freeland-Gaither's violent street-abduction occurred last month. One which was captured and thus quickly solved via surveillance cameras positioned throughout the area, and, of course, with aid from the kidnapped woman's abandoned cell phone.

Yet, strangely enough, Montgomery's would-be rescuers claim those very same devices are of little help to them now. It seems, when a hunt involves a missing young man, "it's a real challenge looking for video from surveillance cameras." And, "Trying to determine from the missing person's cell phone where they were last using the phone," is also weirdly perplexing.

But at least these inordinately confounded authorities are "interviewing as many people as [they] can."

Classically, this approach too will no doubt prove futile, as stories quickly change and film footage of the event and the territory it took place in begins to rapidly deteriorate, ultimately to vanish just as Shane Montgomery did: without a trace.

One thing is for certain though, if indeed the *educated hunch* is correct that Montgomery is somewhere in the frigid canal or river, then his body won't refloat to the surface for a number of weeks and maybe even months. By which time his slowly decomposing corpse would have naturally created volumes and volumes of alcohol -- far in excess of what he consumed just prior to his death.

And, using that false BAC level, he'll thereafter officially be declared to have been "severely intoxicated" and to have "accidentally drowned" as a result.

Case closed. Again.

Story from 12/1/14 - see comment section for updates

NOTE:  Body found in river on January 3rd 2015
believed by family to be Shane Montgomery's -  read 
SHANE MONTGOMERY "ACCIDENTALLY DROWNED"
(Feel free to add your own comments and
updates in either article's comment section.)