Going West: True Crime - Joshua Guimond // 457

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

In November of 2002, a 20-year-old man left a party at his Minnesota university and seemed to vanish into thin air. Police originally believed that he had simply fallen into a nearby lake and drowned by accident. But when they couldn’t find any trace of him, they began to suspect that he was met with foul play after walking home alone. Especially as they unraveled the disturbing accusations against University members and the interesting finds on his computer. This is the story of Joshua Guimond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host T and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to going west. Hello everybody. Hope you're having a great day and if you're in the US getting ready for a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families hopefully. If not, we hope to keep you company. Big thank you to Megan, Kate and Brian for suggesting this case. Oh my god, on its face, this case seems so simple at first but as we dove in we really saw the iceberg of it all and this case legit had Heath and I up in the late hours by our living room fireplace just like talking and theorizing and really creeping ourselves out just nonstop discussing every detail because this case is truly so wild and so unsettling. It is a head scratcher. Yes, it really is and there are so many levels.

Like this case goes so deep and there's so many different pathways that you can walk down I mean it is mind-blowing and we cannot wait to see what you guys have to say about this case Also, I just want to mention please share this episode because it still needs some resolution Yes, and check out all the photos on our socials That's where you can also comment your thoughts and talk to Heath and I and other listeners, just like you about it. We're on Instagram at Going West Podcasts, and we're also on Facebook. Well, all right, guys. This is episode 457 of Going West. So let's get into it. ["Dreamin'"] Stringing December 3rd only on Disney+.

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Skeleton Crew, two episode premiere December 3rd, only on Disney Plus. Interior Chinatown is an all-new series based on the best-selling novel by Charles Yu about a struggling Asian actor who gets a bigger part than he expected when he witnesses a crime in Chinatown. Now streaming only on Disney Plus. A developing story in Stearns County tonight. The sheriff is asking for help from the public with solving a 20-year-old mystery of a missing college student. 20-year-old Joshua Guillemot was last seen on November 9th of 2002. He left a party in a dorm room just before midnight on the campus of St. John's University in Collegeville.

Wednesday will mark 20 years since Joshua Guillemot went missing. November 9th, 2002, Joshua went to a dorm party with friends on the campus of St. John's University just before midnight. He left that party and has not been seen since. This is the first major update in this case since his disappearance now two decades ago. The Stearns County Sheriff's Office released this collage of 28 photos saying several images were found on Josh's computer after his disappearance. Investigators say they haven't been able to identify these people

and they may be able to provide information about the case. Joshua Gimo or Josh as everybody called him was born on June 18th, 1982, the only child of Lisa and Brian Gimo in Redwoods Falls, Minnesota. A few years later, the family of three relocated to Maple Lake, which is a nearly 800 acre lake known for its fishing, about an hour and a half northwest of Minneapolis. Josh's parents did divorce when he was young, but he remained close with both of them as he grew into an amazing child and young man.

As a kid, Josh was known as an excellent student, highly motivated and goal-oriented. His dad Brian recalls that he always had questions for his parents. He was just a super curious kid who loved to learn. So naturally, he never missed an episode of Jeopardy. From a young age, he made up his mind that he would attend school for political science, move on to law school, preferably Yale, then become a senator and by 35 be running for president of the United States. So he was very much always on a positive and strong path. But aside from his studious nature, he was known to have a sharp wit and a taste for adventure.

Josh's sophomore year of high school, he began dating his childhood friend, Katie Benson, who regarded him as confident and charismatic and said the two were best friends, in addition of course to their romantic connection. At Maple Lake High School, Josh was voted most likely to succeed and served as the student council vice president, the class president and valedictorian.

So he did graduate with honors in 2000 and of course delivered a beautiful speech to his fellow departing classmates. After high school, Josh enrolled at St. John's University, which is an all-male private Catholic college, and the counterpart to the all-female St. Benedict College for women, both of which are in Collegeville, Minnesota. And this is a college town that's just a half hour's drive from Josh's hometown of Maple Lake. She is St. College again. Collegeville College College College.

Well Katie wound up accepting her admittance to St. Benedict, so the two were able to keep dating into college, living in the same town. Though, they did break up amicably shortly before Josh's disappearance, and they did remain friends up until that point. Now, on campus, Josh was social and very active, and made friends very easily. He was definitely enjoying his time in school as he persevered through his freshman year. He lived in a building called St. Marr House, reportedly living with five roommates in a townhouse-like style unit with multiple bedrooms, with each of these units housing

up to six students. And we are going to talk a little bit more about his housing situation later, because it does come into question a little bit. It definitely does. Well, on Saturday, November 9th, 2002, during Josh's junior year in college, he headed out to breakfast with his good friend and roommate, Nick. Now, after breakfast, Josh headed back to his room to write a research paper around 10.30 a.m. and he worked on it until about 2.30 p.m., taking brief breaks to chat on

Instant Messenger with Katie and to check out a book from the library. Between 5 and 6 p.m. that day, he and his roommates ate dinner together and Josh, Nick, and Alex hung out and chatted for a bit afterward. Katie invited them over to a low-key party that she was having that night at her dorm, which was on her own college's campus, about a 7-10 minute drive away, but Josh had plans to play poker with some other friends. Nick last saw Josh between 6.30 and 7pm that evening. Then Nick headed to Katie's college, and around 11pm, Josh, Alex, and their friend Greg headed to the party where this poker game was being held at 75 Metancourt.

And these were the Metancourt apartments also on the large St. John's campus. And this is where their friend Nate lived, about a three-minute walk over the bridge covering Stumpf Lake from his own dorm apartment at Marr House on the St. John's campus too, of course. But just to clarify for you guys, this was not like a party party, it was just a group of 12 or so friends hanging out and playing poker. Some people recall that they saw Josh kinda seemed intoxicated there, but other people said that he seemed fine. But unanimously, according to attendees, at roughly around midnight, he got up from his

seat and left without saying a single word to anybody. Now his friends initially thought that he was maybe just making a run to the bathroom because he hadn't said goodbye to anybody. Now Nate, who was one of the hosts of the party, one of the guys that lived there, recalled quote, It's kind of like you don't need to say goodbye. I mean we're all in college, and if you're ready to go home and go to bed, you go. After Josh did not return to the party, his friends did call his room because Josh didn't yet have a cell phone. But nobody answered the phone, so they just assumed that he had gone to sleep and everything

was okay. But the next morning, he still was not in his room, much to Nick's surprise. Again, Nick is Josh's roommate. Yeah, one of his five roommates. So, Nick spoke to both Greg and Alex about this, but neither had seen or heard from him since his abrupt departure from the party the night before. On the afternoon of Sunday, November 10, 2002, Josh missed a mock debate for his school's pre-law society, which is something that his friends say he never would have done. So at this point, his friends are really noticing that something is off, like

something must be going on here. And they felt like the best thing to do was to bring their concerns to his parents back home. Josh's mom Lisa remembers getting a call on Sunday evening around 10 30 p.m that her son was missing and that he hadn't been seen in nearly 24 hours. He hadn't taken anything from his room with him so their initial assumption was that he was staying over at a friend's house but him not returning was certainly concerning. So Josh's key card he had a computerized key card to his apartment. It was last used to access his apartment at 1106 p.m. on Saturday night and it's believed that he had to run back to his room to pick up more alcohol for the party so then it seems like he did return stayed for you know

roughly another 30 to 50 minutes before he ultimately left for the evening but here's something really strange to me is that if we know that Josh did leave the party at around midnight apparently Apparently, according to multiple sources, his computer in his bedroom started playing music at 11 52 p.m. and multiple songs were played and skipped for 40 minutes until 12 32 a.m. meaning he or somebody else would have needed to be present to skip and play different songs. Well, let's assume that Josh did get back to his apartment and he was the one playing the music on the computer. It's very possible that he did not use his own keycard, because as we know, you know, 1106 was the last time his personal keycard was used to get in the apartment.

It's possible that another student let him in with their key card or maybe, you know, somebody was walking in at the same time had already scanned the door and Josh was like, Oh, thanks. And just walked in. But here's the thing. None of his roommates saw him that night or admit to seeing him that night, which is what they say. They say that they hadn't seen him since the party. So unless one of his roommates is hiding something and they were there to let him in, they didn't say that. So then how would he have gotten inside? Sure.

That is a great, great question. So you know, it's very possible that Josh did not make it back to his apartment that night and that somebody else within, you know, that townhouse was using his computer and playing music. Right. Which again, they have also not admitted to as far as the public is concerned, but remember this important detail because we are going to talk a little bit more about computer stuff and Josh's computer in particular and it would be good to know if somebody

else used his computer in that house. It really really would., even more reason to not really believe that this was Josh playing the music is that two students who were walking on that bridge that was over Stumpf Lake, the one that Heath talked about, we are gonna post a map so you guys can see, he would have needed to walk over this bridge to get from his apartment to Nate's apartment. And he was seen by two students walking across that bridge

between 12 and 1230 a.m. which of course would make sense if he had just around midnight left Mettencourt apartments to head home right or to head wherever he was gonna go. Yeah absolutely and two witnesses, I want to mention, they did not know Josh personally. They just came forward saying that they saw a person who matched the description of Josh walking across that bridge. And mind you, this is in November in Minnesota.

So it is very cold. It is snowy. It is icy. They claim, these two students claim that they saw this other student who looked like Josh with his hood up, uh, wearing a, uh, gray hooded sweatshirt in blue jeans walking across the bridge. And that did match the description of what Josh had been wearing that night. Right.

So then this sighting and the fact that he would have had to have walked across this bridge got people and investigators starting to wonder if since he wasn't seen again after this if he had fallen into the lake, you know off this bridge if he was intoxicated so on Tuesday, November 11th 2002 Detectives arranged to search the entire campus as well as a few nearby ravines on horseback. Search parties canvassed the area and deployed 100 members of the National Guard to aid in the efforts, with his parents present for each of them. Josh's father, Brian, was especially active, speaking with every news outlet he could to

raise awareness, and mobilizing volunteers to search as much as they could before the weather became too bitterly cold. At the time, Brian reported, quote, we're getting more ground covered, which is good, but the bad news is he isn't there. Well divers checked a small lake near campus and Josh's family and friends held their breath. But there was just no sign of Josh. Complicating the investigation was the fact that the area was surrounded with lush vegetation and wooded areas and dotted with lakes, streams, and ponds. So there were a ton of bodies

of water Josh technically could have ended up in, especially that one that was right in the middle of campus, which was Stumpf Lake. Yeah, and the private property that the college is on is also huge and very rural, so just a lot of natural land to cover. Well, in Brian's opinion, they focused too much on the possibility that he had fallen into a body of water and not enough on the idea that Josh could have fallen prey to foul play. Brian said at the time, quote, they seemed convinced that he was in there. You've got to check that out. But that can't be the only thing. Brian, along with Josh's

roommates, whom of which he had five, as we mentioned, and college friends, spent the evenings plotting their movements, dissecting possible theories, and hatching new avenues to pursue. Brian remembered, quote, brainstorming in the evenings with Josh's roommates and all the people that he was involved with here. They're thinking like me, right off the bat, somebody grabbed him. That's what everybody who knew him believes. But in the days following Josh's disappearance, the police were hesitant to confirm suspicions of foul play.

Patty Wetterling, whose son disappeared from the area in 1989, joined the search efforts to offer her comfort and expertise as a fellow parent of a missing child. Patty's son Jacob had gone missing from nearby St. Joseph, Minnesota, 13 years prior. And we definitely plan to cover this case on Going West because we do have a ton of recommendations for it. But Brian said of Patty, quote, "...she came up with the idea to get the word out to anybody who lives within a 200-mile or 321-kilometer radius to check their land,

check all of their buildings, and with the deer hunters being out this weekend, we'd ask if all of them could keep their eyes open. A person in my shoes, nothing is happening fast enough. Patty, she seems to feel that things are going as fast as they can. She's been very helpful. Well, she knows. She's still going through it. Unless you have a missing child, you ain't got a clue what it's like."

Lisa agreed that not knowing was the most challenging part, saying, quote, "...it's hard to cope with the unknown, and we don't really know anything for sure, and that's the sad thing. There are still no leads, no concrete evidence that I know of. I can think what I think, and I can speculate about a bunch of stuff, but I can't say for sure. It's just too weird." But investigators strongly believe that Josh's body was being concealed in a body of water, and that it would be given up soon. However, if he had been discarded in a marsh or a swamp instead of a river or a pond, his body could have been trapped on logs or debris and may never float to the surface.

So frustrated with the lack of results, Brian said, quote, I told them from day one he was grabbed. They keep saying, no, he's in the lake. They're still saying the same thing today. But Brian maintained from the beginning that he was abducted, along with many others, believing he was killed on the evening that he disappeared. And Brian even searched the lake himself in a kayak. Like his dad seems like such a sweet guy. So it's really sad to think of him, you know, out there in the waters looking for his son's body,

but he got out there, like his family was so desperate for answers. And as you can hear in these quotes, like he really is desperate for the police to see his side of things, which they eventually would, but it's so annoying that they did that first because he's like, I know, like listen to me, I know. And I think even one of the investigators, you know, said in an interview that he was very nervous about Brian being out there in his kayak

on the lake because he couldn't imagine the feeling that Brian would have to go through if all of the sudden his son's body floated to the surface right next to his kayak. Well, in the weeks following Josh's mysterious disappearance, law enforcement employed helicopters and conducted ground searches. Divers searched Lake Sagatagan, which borders St. John's University to the south, East Gemini Lake, which borders the north end of campus, and Stumpf Lake, which borders the school to the west. Sonar boats headed out on nearby lakes to check for objects underwater, and investigators even dragged Stumpf Lake, scouring the lake bed for any sign of him.

Tracking dogs scoured the campus and indicated to the path between the party and his dorm, proving that he had walked that path, but ultimately, the dogs lost his scent. So getting kind of frustrated, Josh's family brought in their own bloodhound, hoping that this dog would be able to track Josh's scent beyond the path of the party and his dorm. And this dog tracked the scent from the Mettencourt Apartments, Nate's place, to Stumpf Lake, to Josh's apartment, and then to St. John's Abbey, which is the monastery of St. John's. And these locations are all across campus from each other, particularly where St. John's Abbey is. This is the furthest point away.

Again, we will post a map so you guys can see. But after that, his scent was lost. Then sadly the investigation slowed and offered no developments, much to the frustration of his heartbroken friends and parents. And when he still didn't turn up after an exhaustive search of the area's bodies of water, what initially appeared as a potential accident on the way home from a night out, quickly evolved into a possible murder investigation. Celebrate all the little moments of cheer and togetherness at Starbucks. Pair your peppermint mocha with a cozy game night. Sip your chestnut praline latte at a holiday movie marathon.

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or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that road trip bucket list? Get after it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. Now fearing that the momentum of the investigation was stalling, Josh's family established a

fund to pay for search efforts outside of what the Stearns County Sheriff's Office was able to offer. Brian established an email for tips and pleaded with the Colorado-based dive team, the Trident Foundation, to make the trip to search nearby bodies of water. In March of 2003, so six months after Josh's disappearance, the Trident Foundation traveled to Minnesota to search both the East Gemini Lake and Stumpf Lake, but they didn't find anything. So all of these searches and these various bodies of water are just turning up empty. The theory that Josh took his own life or fell into a body of water that night is still plausible, but the Stearns County Sheriff's Office maintained and still maintains that they were doing everything possible to find Josh,

and he's just not in those waters. Now, one theory that does potentially hold some weight was that Josh's university itself was to blame, because Because, many of the monks who lived at the monastery on campus had been accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse against students and even minors. This was making major local headlines, and a lot of the students on campus were disturbed by this, Josh included. His friend Nick even remembered speaking about it with Josh, going so far as to say that Josh was irate about it with Josh, going so far as to say that Josh was irate about it. And Josh had mentioned that he wanted to write a research paper about this.

And though investigators did check his computer, wondering if this could be a viable connection, they didn't find any documents about the subject on Josh's computer. So, it didn't seem like he was actively working on a paper about this whole story, but that he maybe just mentioned it to Nick as something that he was potentially going to do. Or at the very least, it was something that he was aware of and something that he was deeply disturbed by. Now shortly before Josh went missing, a settlement was reached based on explosive findings about sexual misconduct and abuse

at the hands of these monks. As we mentioned, the search dog indicated to the Abbey tracking Josh's scent there, but this didn't lead them to any developments. So a lot of people still wonder if there could possibly be some connection here. Yeah, and it was a little suspicious because Josh's dad Brian really wanted to gain access to the Abbey with their bloodhound, but because the property is private, the school literally said no. It's insane to think that this school would say no to searching for one of their students.

Because like, why not? Like do you have something to hide? What is wrong with doing this if this man's son disappeared on your property and he just wants to look? But then when the police asked, they obliged. And that is when they found his scent inside and near the rear of the building. But there was no actual evidence of him being there despite that. So, like, was he actually there? And if so so is it relevant

to his disappearance the other thing that we have to consider here is that if Josh was religious it's possible that he could have been in there earlier that day the day before and maybe the dog was tracking the scent there because of that it's not it's not I feel like it's kind of strange that, uh, that they would automatically think, oh well, if the scent is in the abbey, that must be where he was killed. Because there's obviously a difference between a bloodhound that's searching for a scent and a dog that is searching for human remains. Yes, so true. And by the way, uh, Josh was raised Catholic. He went to church with his

dad every Sunday. So yeah, there are other reasons that he could have been there and it doesn't mean he was there. It's not like the send has a timestamp, you know? Exactly. But also even Josh's mom, Lisa, has brought up and stated that the school is very secretive and that she thinks that if someone connected to the school is involved in his disappearance, they'll never find his body nor find out what happened to him because they just seem like they're capable of hiding things.

And there's a lot of proof of that. Because the many, many sexual abuse allegations truly is an onion of its own because there's a website dedicated to them called BehindThePineCurtain.com and I'm going to read the statement at the top of the website. It says, quote, this website is dedicated to the 260 plus known victims of sexual and other misconduct by over 100 members of St. John's community in Collegeville, Minnesota, USA. The community includes St. John's Abbey, St. John's University, St. John's Prep School, the Liturgical Press, the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, and the School of Theology."

End quote, by the way. And it also lists every single named member that has been accused of this abuse as well and talks about the the various accusations and describes that this abuse has been reported since the 1930s with nearly 60 monks, 13 other members of the St. John's community, and 32 individuals with strong ties to the St. John's community having been accused over time. I mean this is crazy. The fact that there is so much abuse going on and there are even instances where monks

were being accused up until the mid 2000s. There was a report of one of the monks that was apparently murdered in the men's locker room downstairs of the Abbey, the monastery there, in 2009. Yeah, let's actually talk about him because this one particular priest, a man named Father Bruce Walmering, was accused of misconduct, i.e. unacceptable or improper behavior, by a student at St. John's University three months after Josh went missing, claiming that the misconduct occurred during the fall of 2002. The student said in an email to Abbott, John Klassen, and VP Gar

Kellam on March 19th 2003, quote, I'm starting to wonder why I haven't met with you already if you guys are aware of this situation, there is a severe problem at this university this present day. I want to deal with this as quickly as possible and graduate as quickly as possible so I can leave this place that is causing me problems. Remember this was written in March of 2003. This student is claiming the misconduct occurred in the fall of 2002, and Josh was attending and went missing from the same school in 2002.

Exactly. The fall of 2002. Exactly. So, there is not any proof to believe that this priest would be responsible for what happened to Josh, but he did have a long history of misconduct and was known again to be committing such acts when Josh disappeared. And Bruce, like Heath mentioned,

he actually died under suspicious circumstances years later in 2009. His death was not reported as a murder, it was reported as an accident. Yeah, they said that he essentially just fell and hit his head. Yeah, but I mean, who knows? But the autopsy really didn't add up to that.

Especially, you know, as we're talking about this, going back to the fact that the bloodhound hinted to the abbey or to Josh being in the abbey, we know that he most likely at least frequented the place. It was on his campus. He was raised Catholic. But does it mean again that Josh was really there that night? Does it mean that he was being abused?

Does it mean that he was prayed upon by a Catholic monk? Not necessarily, but possibly. Well, I think this is just one of those speculative theories that even Josh's mom is kind of leaning towards. Well, at the very least, all this stuff has made a lot of us wonder if something was done to Josh by one of the many predators on campus and near campus, or if because of this kind of sexual abuse ring of sorts, if you will, if other predators frequented the campus and area.

Now, if it was someone from from campus like Josh's mom said, it would be very difficult to uncover their secrets. But remember this as we dive into stuff about Josh's computer, because someone on campus being responsible could be the easiest explanation for how someone could have access to his computer. But we'll get to that in a second. Well, with no other leads or avenues to explore, theories began to develop, casting suspicion on even those closest to Josh, like his roommate and best friend, Nick.

According to both Nick and Katie, Josh and Katie had broken up shortly before his disappearance. Josh and Katie dated for about four and a half years and still considered the other one their best friend. However, on the evening of his disappearance, Josh and Nick supposedly had an argument, potentially over Katie. And actually one of their roommates apparently overheard this argument. Katie admitted that she and Nick were good friends and that they were even attracted to each other and had considered dating. But Nick claims that their connection wasn't romantic and that they only had kissed about once or twice.

Katie says that despite them having broken up, Josh was her best friend and moving on in college without him was nearly impossible. So she certainly wouldn't have ever been involved in something bad happening to Josh. But Nick on the other hand had come under some scrutiny for possible involvement by the police. Though he was never announced as an official suspect or even a person of interest, detectives claimed that there is an hour for which he was unaccounted for in the early morning hours after Josh disappeared. Now in his questioning with police, he gave a different account of his whereabouts for

the morning than Katie gave them, even though they were together. Because remember, Nick had gone over to Katie's apartment that night for some sort of party or gathering that she was having. Now he actually told police that he left her apartment around 2 30 a.m. to head home and we know that it takes about 7 to 10 minutes to drive back to his dorm apartment. Well guess what? He swiped his key card into his dormitory apartment at 2 42 a.m. So the timeline obviously matches up right well here's the thing Katie told police that Nick left at 1 a.m. or 1 30 a.m. and this is why police believe that there's over an hour of time that was unaccounted for

here though it also begs the question which of them is telling the truth yeah and we have to remember that these are college-age kids, they're most likely drinking, maybe they're misremembering the times that they're coming and going from these parties, but Katie never really refuted this. I mean, she's stuck by the story that Nick left, you know, at 1 a.m. or possibly 1.30. Nick is saying, no, I left at 2 30, which would match up with his key card. But that doesn't seem to be correct. Yeah, because if it's a seven or 10 minute drive and he tapped into his apartment at 2 42 a.m. and he left at around 2 30 a.m. That totally makes sense, like you said. But if he left at one or one 30, that is a totally

different timeline. That's an hour or an hour and a half off. That's a lot of time. And what would you be doing during this time? Like, it's not like you're gonna head down to McDonald's and spend an hour ordering food or whatever that late at night. Which if he did, then he could have said, I left at one and then I went to go get food

and here's a receipt, you know? Sure, he's saying that he went directly home. But as we know, after 12 o'clock is when Josh was last seen. He was last seen between 12 and 1230 AM. So if Nick leaves at one o'clock or 1 to 30, it's possible that they could have run into each other or had an encounter of some kind somewhere. But we just don't know what time Nick

actually left Katie's house and if it even matters. Well on top of all of this, Nick told detectives that he would consent to a polygraph test. Well he actually said that he would consider it. So they actually ended up scheduling him for this polygraph test and he basically told detectives that he did not want to take it anymore, saying that they were famously unreliable and that he didn't want to cloud the investigation with false positives or leads, since he knew that he wasn't involved. Yeah, he kind of said, well, I know that you looking into me is going to be a waste of your time, so I don't want to do this.

But it's like, in my opinion, the right thing to do is if you know that you're innocent, then say, yeah, sure, let's get this over with so you can move on and find the person that did something to my friend. Well, I understand the sentiment there, but there are a lot of people that will advise you against doing this, even if you are innocent. It's totally normal, as a lot of detectives know. Yeah, that is true. And we are actually going to talk about that a little bit later of why this could make sense otherwise not relating

to Josh's disappearance. But a lot of people have looked at this and kind of looked at it sideways. Yeah, absolutely. And there's just some certain things that Nick has said during different interviews that kind of throw people off and make them feel a little

iffy about him. But Nick is also now a lawyer, and he maintains that he had nothing to do with Josh's disappearance, and was even interviewed by Unsolved Mysteries just to say that. Now another potential theory is that of Josh's online activity. Surprisingly, his internet history had been scrubbed in the few days following his disappearance. Nick claims that he hadn't been the one to touch Josh's computer, and investigators never surmised who had done this. So let's talk about this a little more. Heath and I have gone back and forth on

this so much because we both think that it's a really interesting angle to his disappearance it might not be connected at all and it might absolutely be connected. Unfortunately police did not remove Josh's computer from his bedroom when he was reported missing. They they went into his room they were searching all over campus with all these different teams, but because they thought that he had simply fallen into a river or a lake or, you know, some body of water or that something natural had happened to him, they, their brains weren't thinking, oh, maybe there's some interesting information on his computer and we should

seize it. Right. Maybe there's something more nefarious going on. And I will mention when they did go in there to check out Josh's room There was nothing amiss Everything looked very normal there was nothing knocked over his his actually his his glasses and his contacts Were still in his room, which is part of why they were like oh everything looks fine It doesn't look like anything in this room is gonna be relevant

and I'm sure they are kicking themselves constantly over that to this day, because basically Brian, Josh's dad was the one to clean out Josh's room a couple of weeks later. He took all the stuff out of the room. And after doing that is when police said, Hey, you know, let's take a look at that computer. When they're thinking maybe foul play is involved here and maybe there's some clues on his computer, right? Because now it had been weeks and they're like well, we haven't been able to find any sign of Josh Maybe there's something going on with that computer. So when they are looking through his computer

Police noticed that after he went missing they have not released when exactly this happened What day if it was the day after two days later later, three days later, four days later, we don't know. They just said a few days. Yeah, within the few days after Josh went missing, somebody used a free internet window washer on his computer, which is a software that erases computer history and protects online privacy. So as far as we know, no actual files were deleted. It's possible that that happened, but they at least know that his internet history was

scrubbed. So for Josh to have done this himself before he went missing is one thing. You know, people delete their history all the time. But the fact that somebody else would have had to do this after they knew he was missing because all of the people in his life, his roommates and his friends pretty much knew the following morning that he was MIA and definitely knew by the following evening when they reached out to Josh's parents that he was missing and something was going on here for someone to do this after that is so suspicious because why? And also the risk that this person would have needed

to take if they were not one of Josh's roommates is huge because people were on high alert for him so quickly and surely one of the five guys in his apartment would have known if somebody some random person walked in because they're they're hoping that Josh is going to walk through the door. So who did this and what did they get rid of? And you know, something really interesting about this, this internet scrubber, is that Josh had never done this before. He had never used anything like this before on his computer.

And then, you know, going back to the people that have access to Josh's computer are his roommates, right? Yes. Are his roommates potentially maybe one of his friends that lives in a different dorm or whatever possibly, but it's so interesting to me because that really wouldn't raise any alarm bells if one of the roommates was seen inside Josh's room after he disappeared using his computer. It wouldn't be too strange.

Which is part of why, again, some people go back to Nick because they naturally wonder if this is why he didn't want to take a polygraph test. Again, this could have had nothing to do with Josh's disappearance and somebody was erasing something else, but Nick did admit that the night when he got home from Katie's,

he checked Josh's room probably to see if he was awake to say, Hey, or whatever, according to his side of the story. Then the next morning, when he woke up, he went to go say, Hey to Josh. Josh was still not there. So then he checked AOL messenger to see if Josh was online, even though obviously he wouldn't be cause he wasn't at his computer, but he saw that he had been idle for 12 hours by that point. So he knew that, okay, Josh had not been on his computer since before he left to play poker. Then he says that he was very careful not to go on Josh's computer, which raised some flags anyway. Why are you

being careful not to go on his computer and why would you go on his computer anyway? Yeah, you would just say, oh no, I never touched his computer. But the fact that he says that I was very careful not to touch Josh's computer, it kind of raised some very strange alarms for me personally. Just because I didn't feel like you would need to say that if you didn't touch it. Well, there is a big elephant in the room that we have yet to discuss.

So let's get into a very possible reason why someone would have potentially wanted to scrub his history. Now, investigators pored over Josh's emails and personal files, despite the omission of his browsing history, and stumbled upon something that may have been involved in his fate.

Josh was posting personal ads on Yahoo, kinda pretending to be somebody else. I know a lot of people have done this, you know, even today, you are anonymous on the internet if you wanna be. You can hide behind a computer screen, sorry, be whoever you want to be. Yeah, you can be anonymous, you can... people do it all over the place on all social media.

Absolutely, and they were very much doing that back in 2002. So here's the thing, in total, Josh had three Yahoo Personals listings. One was a man's persona with some of Josh's personal details shared actually. I'll get into that in a second. The other two listed him as a female and these are all different usernames. So one of these was a woman that he called Gwen and it had a photo of a blonde woman that no one in his life claimed to recognize. And then for the male username, it was actually Joshua56321. And 56321 was his postal code in Collegeville, Minnesota.

That was the zip code of the area. And I just want to say a lot of people, I've seen a lot of comments of people saying, why would he obviously this wasn't Josh making this? Somebody made this account on his computer and were posing as him. Why would he put his personal information? Here's the thing. It was a very common practice back in the Yahoo personal days for people looking for

meetups to include their zip code in their username because it made it easier to find people who lived locally to you. So it also then would make it easier to find real-world matches. So that explains that. And even being potentially closeted, this wasn't an automatic out because let's be real, there were probably a large number of Joshua's living in that zip code then, even with only 4,000 people living in that zip code in 2002. You know, this isn't an uncommon name. It's not like his name was Heath or Daphne or, you know, something else. Right. Yeah, that's an extremely common name. Yeah. So I I do believe that this makes sense.

And of course, if he's wanting to chat to different people under different personas and kind of have fun or explore things, there's nothing wrong with that. And that is why this led to speculation that Josh was potentially struggling with his sexuality and that that may have had something to do with his disappearance. Now Katie and Nick both have maintained that they would be surprised if Josh was gay. Obviously that means nothing because he could have been keeping that private and trying to explore it personally this way and doing so on on Yahoo Personals was his way of kind of doing that.

It seems like that to me. Remember this is 2002. He is going to a Catholic school. He was raised Catholic. He wants to run for president someday. He probably feels like he can't be who he really is if this is who he really is. And I think just on top of that, to kind of drive the nail home here, or is it drive the nail home?

Drive the point home. Drive the, whatever, drive the nail on the head with the home and I don't know. Hit the nail on the head. Yeah, anyway, to really go further with this, there were some pretty alarming images that were found on Josh's computer. And that is why, you know, just on top of the fact that he was, you know, talking to different people using these different accounts as potentially being a female talking to other men, there were 28 photos of different men. Now, some of

them have their shirts off, some of them don't, they're all different ages. And we can assume that these are various men that he was speaking to on his different usernames on Yahoo. Right, yeah, and you know, it's not like we're trying to push the narrative that Josh is gay, but police released that series of 28 photos of different men that were found on Josh's computer, hoping that the public would be able to identify one of these people to see if maybe potentially they were talking to Josh,

and if they had anything to do with Josh's disappearance. Yeah, because if you think about it, investigators were wondering this, everybody's wondering this, if maybe he was talking to the wrong person and they got angry if they found out that Josh was a man when he was supposed to be a woman and maybe they sought revenge on him or maybe, in my opinion, this is more plausible a little bit, he had planned to meet up with somebody that night,

which would explain why he left the party so suddenly. Possibly, somebody that he had met up with before, or somebody new, was waiting for him. Well, and there are definitely things that, you know, you're about to actually talk about that kind of align with why people might believe that he met up with somebody that night. And just real quick before we move on, we are going to post the 28 photos of these various men on our socials so that, you know, if anybody out there can recognize them, maybe that will help the investigation moving forward. And they could just be random innocent men that Josh was talking to.

But if one of these people is somebody that he met up with, it is very important to help the investigation in way of helping identify these people. Because the questions still remain to this day. Was the deleted internet history an attempt to cover up the motivation for a crime, or just to save Josh the, I hate to even say this, cause it's not embarrassing,

but the believed embarrassment of having his internet history broadcast alongside the news of his disappearance. It is entirely possible that Nick scrubbed the computer to save his friend from said embarrassment, and that that's why he wouldn't consent to a polygraphgraph because he wanted to avoid getting caught of disposing evidence. Another thing that Nick potentially could have wanted to delete from Josh's computer. I don't know what would have exactly been on there,

but there's a little small thing that I want to add and it's that Josh and Nick were reportedly making and selling fake IDs out of their apartment. And I wanted to mention this in case it could somehow be relevant, though it is not leaned into by police in their discussions of the case, but that is the info. You know, this was also a somewhat popular thing for college students to do when fake IDs were a lot easier to make. But was there any evidence that they did this on Josh's computer and Nick said oh god now he's being investigated police are going to take his computer I don't want to get in trouble for selling fake IDs this is going to ruin my career and my

college education yeah we have to think about the fact that these again are young men they have their entire futures ahead of them they don't want some stupid little thing like selling fake IDs which is you know obviously it's not a great thing to do but it's not the biggest deal in the world they don't want to ruin their future and get kicked out of school just because they're doing something like this exactly well Heath why don't you go into another very interesting piece of evidence that could connect to a meetup being the reason for Josh's believed murder? Yeah, so basically St. John's had something that was called the Life Safety Reports.

So essentially, Life Safety is a service program that's provided to students, employees, and the monastic campus community. And it provides various different helpful safety services that include auto collision reports, 24-hour campus patrol, property protection, 24-hour escort services, vehicle jumpstart assistance, etc. So naturally, investigators looked into these reports, and two of them really stood out to them from the general time around when Josh went missing. Now, first it's important to mention that with this massive St. John's campus, there

are certain areas that are unlit at night, and known to be darker areas that are good spots for hookups. And while patrolling one of these areas in 2002, shortly before Josh went missing. An orange Pontiac Sunfire was spotted by campus security. And the security officer watched as a college-aged male got out of the passenger side of the car and ran into a nearby wooded area. So this is really, really strange. Something strange to see at night when you're patrolling the area. Now when this vehicle was seen again on another night, the security

officer actually recorded their license plate number and the vehicle description and even kind of pulled the driver over to speak with them and make a report on what they were doing there. And all the man said was that he was quote dropping off a student on campus And since there was nothing illegal about that I mean obviously it's it's very much illegal to drop somebody off at campus the security officer didn't take their information and just let them go But when police read these reports they at least had the vehicles info and the license plate So they looked into the car owner. Yeah, because they're wondering, was this person dropping off Josh?

Was this person somebody that Josh saw frequently and they they knew they knew where to go and they met that night? Yeah, was it was it a predator? I mean, they never mentioned they never mentioned the age of the person or what you know what the person was described to look like. We don't know anything about the driver. Exactly. This person could have been a college-age student. They also could have been 45 years old. We don't know.

So, they did look into this owner, and when they located the car, they found that the car had been crushed at a local scrap metal facility. Like, selling a car is one thing, but having it crushed is another thing. Maybe I'm just a dummy who's never crushed a car, but you don't need a reason to crush a car, obviously. You can make a couple hundred bucks off doing so, but that's not enough money in my opinion to do this unless your car maybe is totaled, because you can sell cars for much more than that for parts. Well, yeah, that's, that really is probably the farthest out there. Uh, you know, thoughts on why you would crush a car is to like get money from it.

It's more likely that a car would have been totaled or been in some sort of accident was undrivable at that point and needed to be crushed. Um, and so, but the, you know, the thing about this is that police were really hoping that that car was not totaled and crushed because they wanted to see if maybe there was some DNA evidence inside this orange Pontiac Sunfire. Yeah, as far as we know, this person did not claim to knowing Josh or having picked him up. But without any actual evidence for police to go off of, you know, from the car, they can't really do anything with the owner of the vehicle,

because he could be absolutely some random person that has never even heard of Josh. But I think this is a really interesting angle, because police still talk about it and they are still desperate to at least know if this person was somebody that Josh was talking to. Yeah, exactly. And just to kind of do like a little bit of a recap here, we've got sexually abusing monks that are living on this campus. Then we've got a Pontiac Sunfire that is randomly dropping off students in the middle of the night, male students in the middle of the night. And then we've got the whole thing

with scrubbing the computer. So there's a lot of really interesting angles and things to think about and theories. And I feel like that's why this case has so much speculation, is because of all of this really weird stuff that's surrounding Josh's case. Well let's talk, let's think about this for a second. If, if in fact, the person who is

responsible for Josh's disappearance is somebody that he met up with, is somebody that he was potentially hooking up with from Yahoo Personals, let's kind of unravel what that would look like. If this person picked up Josh and did something to him, it's hard for me to believe that some random outsider, assuming this person is not somebody from campus, even though they very well could be, just cause they have a car and they're meeting up, does not mean they have to be coming

from somewhere else, right? True. I'm wondering how then they would get back to Josh's computer if that is indeed connected. In my head, I'm like, oh, they've gotta be connected, but no, they do not have to be. How would they get into his apartment? They obviously wouldn't have used his key card.

So how would they do this? Because if somebody is saying, hey, I need to come in and do something really quick, the roommates are going to know and take note and tell police we're going to find out about it. So just in general, how would an outsider know where he lived and know his exact apartment unit, get inside, get to his computer on, you know, unseen, delete the history by downloading a scrubber and then get out unseen and Still get away with it all to this day Yeah

And I think that there would have to be these certain stepping stones in place for any of that to be possible Like Josh would have had to have been at the apartment By himself that night when none of his roommates were there possibly invited somebody in himself that night when none of his roommates were there, possibly invited somebody in, but then also didn't use his key card to get into his apartment and somebody else let him in in this other person that he might potentially be with, then they have to go on his computer and figure out how to delete the conversations between himself and Josh and then get out of there unnoticed completely. Well also I was thinking if, oh what if he brought somebody back to his

apartment, but without scanning his key card again, and with none of his roommates saying that they let Josh in that night, that's not possible. So then I also wonder who the hell was on Josh's computer playing music at around midnight. If it wasn't Josh, because Josh wasn't even home by 11 52 as far as we can tell from the timeline. And then, you know, we know that the scrubber was downloaded

in the days after he went missing. So it's not like, oh, one of his roommates led him in and didn't tell the police, why would they not tell the police? Then also the computer wasn't even scrubbed that night. Exactly. So like the whole thing of music being played from his computer makes me wonder

if somebody in his apartment, one of his roommates, probably not Nick then, because Nick wasn't home at midnight yet either, was using his computer or had access to it, and they downloaded the scrubber. But again, why? Yeah, and that's why I think it's very, very possible that these two incidences, Josh potentially meeting up with somebody and disappearing and the, the computer scrubbing could just be completely separate. Well, here's what Josh's dad, Brian himself had to say, because he is very suspicious of this internet washer being used as well. He said, quote,

all the kids in that apartment could have had access to his computer. So I don't know, that feels kind of significant to me. And something we have to remember as well is all of Josh's digital communication would have had to happen on his computer because he didn't have a cell phone. So if he was meeting up with somebody, if he was talking to somebody, if somebody said something incriminating to him digitally, it would have been on that

computer. Right. And they could have scheduled a meetup to meet in a specific area at a specific time that night. And Josh wouldn't have to go back to, you know, use his key card to get into his apartment to confirm this because it could have happened earlier in the day or something. But then how did they erase it? How did they get in without the five other people in the house seeing? And how would they have even gotten into the door? Yeah, exactly.

And I just think it's so interesting because we know that Josh and Katie had broken up like a short while before he disappeared. We know that he was online talking to people through Yahoo Personals potentially with this idea of, hey I'm lonely, you know, like me and my girlfriend just broke up a bit ago, I want to explore my sexuality, it's time to like meet up with somebody. Love it. You know, which is totally fine. But yeah, I lean towards the idea, and I

think a lot of people do, that Josh was planning to meet with somebody that night and potentially somebody took him out of the area. Because as we know, there is no other evidence in and around that campus that connects to Josh's disappearance. It really seems like he had to have been picked up, essentially plucked off the street. There's no evidence of anything happening in his apartment, even if one of his roommates did have something to do with his disappearance and they let him in, they were home when he got there and they let him in

and did something to him there. How would they have gotten his body out of the apartment? Why would there be no evidence whatsoever left behind of a crime occurring in that apartment when police did check? Cause there would have been. So I agree with you. I think that he was meeting up with somebody

or somebody saw him walking and they stopped him. And for whatever reason, whether it was an accident or fully on purpose, somebody took his life. And whether or not that is related to what happened on his computer, I wish I knew. Yeah, I completely agree with all of that. On June 18th, 2003, which was Josh's 21st birthday or what was supposed to be his 21st birthday,

his dad Brian organized a protest outside the Stearns County Courthouse hoping to draw attention to Josh's case. Later that year on November 9, the oneyear anniversary of Josh's disappearance. Friends and family held a memorial in his honor, planting a tree and sharing memories to celebrate his brief yet memorable time with them. Brian continued his investigatory efforts on behalf of his son until he was hit with a restraining order by St. John's University,

prohibiting him from organizing searches on campus or in the Abbey and effective for two years. In 2021, Brian actually took his own legal action, filing a lawsuit against the Stearns County Sheriff's Office, alleging that they had not taken enough action in the efforts to find his son. He also sought the release of their investigative documents detailing the abuse at the hand of 18 different monks who had been present on campus.

A judge sadly denied this request though. In 2022, Josh's story was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Definitely recommend everybody check that out. It is a great episode and that led to a massive uptick in the amount of tips. But unfortunately, Josh's case remains unsolved. So let's keep his story in the light because somebody knows something. Joshua Gimo is blonde and has blue eyes. When he went missing he stood at 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighed 170 pounds. On the night of his disappearance he was wearing a

watch, jeans, and a hooded sweatshirt with the logo of his University St. John's on it. If you have any information about the disappearance of Joshua Gamo please call the Stearns County Sheriff's Office at 320-259-3700. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I know that there's a lot of speculation, a lot of theories, but I really want to know what you guys have to say.

I want to know what you guys think about Josh's case. Yeah, I hope this also wasn't confusing. This was honestly a difficult episode to put together because Heath and I have so many thoughts. Everybody else has so many thoughts. It's hard to kind of compartmentalize them and organize them. But would love to hear what everybody is thinking about this. And if you guys agree with Heath and I or if you have a different theory, please comment on our socials. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to everybody who recommended this case. And again, if you're listening to this before the Thanksgiving holiday and you live in the

US, please have a beautiful day with family. If not, again, we hope that we can keep you company here on Going West. Yes, a big happy Thanksgiving to all of you guys that celebrates and we will see you guys on Friday. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger. Oh, Sunway launched their Black Friday deals early! Nah, you gotta wait until the last day. That's when the real deals drop.

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