Joshua Guimond

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Joshua Guimond
[[File:Joshua Guimond.jpg|]][[File:Joshua Guimond.jpg|]] [[File:Joshua Guimond.jpg|]]
Born	June 18, 1982 (age 40) Maple Lake, Minnesota, U.S.
Disappeared	November 9, 2002 (age 20) Collegeville, Minnesota, U.S.
Status	Missing for 23 years, 7 months and 5 days
🏫 Education	St. John's University
💼 Occupation
Known for	Missing person
Height	5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)
🌐 Website	https://www.findjoshua.com/

Joshua Cheney Guimond (born June 18, 1982) is a third-year college student, who disappeared after he attended a party with some of his friends on November 9, 2002. His current whereabouts remain unknown. He was a 20-year-old student attending St. John's University, in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Background

Early Life

Joshua Cheney Guimond was born June 18, 1982, in Maple Lake, Minnesota, the only child of Brian Guimond and Lisa Cheney.

Guimond graduated from Maple Lake High School. He attended St. John's University, where he studied political science, and was part of the university's Mock Trial Team. Guimond had plans to pursue law at Northwestern University, in the future.

Saturday, November 9, 2002

Disappearance

File:Map-St-John-University-2014.jpg

St. John's University campus map, circa 2014. 46 represents Metten Court, where Joshua Guimond attended a party, and 18 represents St. Maur House, where his dorm was.

Around 11:00pm, Guimond and some friends decided to meet up with another group, and departed Guimond's apartment at St. Maur House, walking a short, 3-minute distance across campus to Metten Court. There, they continued drinking beer and playing cards. Those with Guimond that evening claim they did not observe him to be intoxicated. Friends saw Guimond leave the gathering about 30 minutes after he arrived, at 11:45pm, assuming he was just leaving to use the bathroom. None of the attendees reported seeing Josh leaving Metten Court, and none of the attendees reported seeing him walk back to his apartment. His movements after he left the social gathering are currently unknown, though two witnesses reported seeing him walking on the bridge near Stumpf Lake, around the same time he abruptly departed the poker gathering.

Guimond was scheduled to be at a mock trial meeting at 2:30 pm, the following afternoon. When he didn't show up, several of his companions tried to reach him in his apartment, to no response. As it was out of the ordinary for Guimond to miss a meeting, his classmates were concerned that something was wrong. After comparing notes, they realized that no one had seen Guimond since the night before. His car was still parked in the designated spot, and his keys were found securely in his apartment, along with his glasses, contact lenses and wallet, which included his credit cards and identification.

Investigation

Initial search

Following his continued absence Monday morning, his classmates alerted Stearns County Sheriff's Department and reported Josh missing. Deputies conducted a massive search for Guimond, combing all 2,400 acres of the St. John's campus, as well as 700 adjacent acres of forest. Search dogs were brought in to track where Guimond might have gone when he left Metten Court. In order to return to his apartment at St. Maur House, Guimond would have to cross Lake Stumpf using one of the two bridges.

After tracker dogs appeared to smell him near a culvert on the east end of Lake Stumpf, officers feared Guimond may have fallen into the lake. Although the waters were relatively calm, the water temperature was only a few degrees above zero. The temperature would have made survivability low. An extensive search of the lake failed to produce any evidence that Guimond was in the water, but police would continue to monitor the area. A Minnesota State Patrol helicopter flew over the campus using infrared radar but found nothing relevant to the search.

Guimond's parents arrived at the university on Monday afternoon and made tearful pleas for information about what had happened to their son. Brian Guimond spent the next few nights sleeping in his son's apartment, talking to the students about Josh and gathering ideas for possible search areas. He attended several press conferences and made a strong appeal to area residents to check their properties for clues to Guimond's whereabouts. He was convinced that his son had been kidnapped.

Over the following three days, an area of ​​20 square miles was thoroughly searched several times, but nothing was found. The police became increasingly convinced that Guimond would be found at one of the lakes on campus. They worked with university officials to lower the water level in Lake Stumpf; although the lake was very shallow, the water was very murky. Divers were sent several times without success, so the lake was washed away as the water level dropped. Again, nothing was found to indicate that Guimond had been in Lake Stumpf. The divers were sent out again a week later, this time with side-scan sonar equipment that gave them a detailed view of the lake floor. They didn't find any evidence of Guimond.

Guimond was the fourth student to go missing, following that of Chrisopher Jenkins, Michael Knoll, and Erika Dalquist, in the Minnesota-Wisconsin area since October 30, 2002, sparking fears that the disappearances may be connected. They were all later proven to be unrelated to one another, following the appearances of the other students' remains over the next few months and years.

Further developments

Guimond's apartment was also searched, and yielded no results; Several files on Guimond's computer were noted as having been deleted via an internet washer, by an unknown party. In 2008, some of these files were recovered, and yielded pornography of both heterosexual and homosexual nature. They discovered that Guimond had been spending time on Yahoo! Personals, chatting online with other men and sometimes portraying himself as a female.

In 2022, Stearns County Sherriff's Department released 28 photos of 'unidentified' individuals, found on the hard drive, that may be involved in his disappearance.

Theories

Casual encounter theory

File:Stearns-county-missing-persons-case.jpg

The 28 'unidentified' individuals, whose images were released by the Stearns County Sheriff's Department in 2022, in an effort to locate said individuals for information on the disappearance.

Following the recovery of the files on Guimond's computer, Stearns County Sheriff's Department held the possible belief was that Guimond was exploring his sexuality and looking for “casual encounters” online. Around the same time, there were two separate campus reports of a man driving an orange Pontiac Sunfire dropping off other men on campus — including one who ran away when security approached the vehicle. They were able to locate the driver, but he didn’t provide any additional information, and the car was destroyed before an investigation could be conducted.

Investigators posit that the, “most likely avenue or theory”, is that someone Guimond met on a dating site is responsible for his disappearance. Nearly two decades later, the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office is seeking new leads to help solve Guimond’s case. On October 21, 2022, they released a collage of 28 men’s dating profile photos that they found on Guimond’s hard drive.

“These individuals remain unidentified, and they may be able to provide information related to Joshua’s disappearance,” reads the post, asking anyone who recognizes any of the men, or knows anything about Guimond’s disappearance, to contact their office.‌

Smiley-Face Killer theory

Guimond wasn't the only student to go missing along the I-94 corridor. With disappearances of 3 other college-aged students in the area, Stearns County Sheriff's Department initially entertained the involvement of a serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer, but rejected the scenario after the other student's bodies were located, and their deaths were declared to be, respectively, a suicide and an accident. ABC News first reported on the theory 10 days after Josh Guimond's disappearance. They compared his case to the disappearances of 21-year-old Christopher Jenkins of Minneapolis, and 22-year-old Michael Noll of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who both vanished while drinking with friends in the weeks before Josh Guimond's disappearance. 21-year-old Erika Dalquist, of Brainerd, was also reported as missing in the area, and her death was ruled a homicide.

However, with Christopher Jenkins' death later being reclassified as a homicide, paired with that of Erika Dalquist's murder, some independent investigators believe the serial killer theory has merit and count Josh Guimond as a victim of the murderer now known as The Smiley Face Killer.

Accidental drowning theory

The first theory investigators developed was that Guimond may have gotten insensibly drunk and either passed out in the cold or wandered into the lake which lay between his dormitory and the apartments where he was last seen. This theory was based on the fact that a K-9 tracking team followed Josh's scent to the shore of Stumpf Lake, where his trail went cold. Unfortunately, despite multiple drag teams and diver teams searching the lake, no trace of Josh Guimond's body or belongings was ever found in Stumpf Lake. However, those with Guimond that evening claim they did not observe him to be intoxicated, casting doubt on this theory.

St. John's Abbey scandal theory

Nick Hydukovich, Josh's friend, as well as co-captain of the mock trial team at St. John's University, proposed another theory, suggesting that Josh Guimond's disappearance might have been connected to reports of sexual misconduct at the Abbey at St. John's University.

Hydukovich claimed that he and Josh had discussed the case and that he believed that Josh might have begun investigating reports that the monks who taught at their college might have been covering up even more instances of inappropriate relations with the students than had already been reported to the press. This would explain why, according to Unsolved Mysteries' case study, an independent K-9 team hired by Josh Guimond's father tracked his scent to the abbey.

However, there is no evidence apart from Nick Hydukovich's testimony that Josh Guimond had been investigating the crimes of the local clergy, much less discovered information that might have gotten him killed.

Media Depictions

In the years following Guimond's disappearance, his case would receive media attention on various podcasts and other media outlets. Most recently, the case would be featured as the prime case in Season 1 of the podcast, Simply Vanished, and a Volume 3 episode of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries.

See Also

• Murder of Jacob Wetterling, 1989 missing persons case, also in Stearns County, Minnesota. 11-year-old Wetterling was abducted from nearby St. Joseph, less than 10 miles away from St. John's University, and his body was located in Paynesville in 2016.

References

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