Weekend stories by two Twin Cities television stations have advanced the theory that a serial killer may be at work in the Upper Midwest and that Joshua Guimond may have been one of his victims.
Joshua, a Maple Lake High School graduate, disappeared without a trace from St. John’s University in November of 2002. Despite searches undertaken by the Stearns County Sheriff’s Department and Joshua’s parents, Brian Guimond and Lisa Cheney, the question of what happened to Joshua still remains unanswered nearly four years later.
On Sunday night, television channels KSTP-5 and KMSP-9 presented news stories that suggest a serial killer may have been involved in the disappearance of nearly two dozen young men along the I-94 corridor. The Fox 9 investigators presented the most in-depth report. “Tonight we are breaking open the big picture,” said reporter Tom Lyden, “the parallels, and patterns leading some to believe a serial killer is really at work.”
Included in the list of 22 young men who have disappeared along the I-94 corridor through the Upper Midwest in the past ten years were Joshua, Chris Jenkins and Michael Noll. All three college students disappeared within two weeks of each other in 2002. The body of Chris Jenkins, a student at the University of Minnesota, was found in February of 2003 in the Mississippi River. The body of Michael Noll, a University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire student, was found in March of 2003 in an Eau Claire lake. Both of those deaths and the disappearance of Joshua were attributed to the consumption of alcohol, which police said caused the young men to stumble into trouble and in the case of Jenkins and Noll, drown when they fell into a nearby body of water.
Both television news stories featured statements by Steve Jenkins, the father of Chris, who said he believes foul play was behind the death of his son. “Truly, this is the most horrific position any parent can ever be put into,” Steve Jenkins said in the Fox 9 report. “It’s devastating.”
More information appears in this week’s issue of the Messenger.
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