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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. St. John's University student Joshua Guimone left a party on November 9, 2002 and was never seen again.
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Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Josh was born June 18, 1982, to parents Brian and Lisa. When he was four, the family moved from Redwood Falls, Minnesota, to the small town of Maple Lake, where he grew up. Josh's mom described him as outgoing, always happy, and super smart. He might have come across as serious and studious to some, but once you got to know him, you quickly realized he had a great sense of humor.
In high school, Josh made a big impression as a standout student. He was the senior class president, and his girlfriend, Katie Benson, was the senior class treasurer. By graduation, he had become the school's valedictorian and had been nominated by his classmates as most likely to succeed. In 2002, Josh was a 20-year-old political science major attending St. John's University, an all-boys college in Collegeville, Minnesota.
He was in his third year and lived in one of the school's on-campus dorm rooms. His high school girlfriend, Katie, went to the affiliated all-female college, the College of St. Benedict, which meant they shared a few classes together. Outside of class, his hobbies were serving as a treasurer for the Pre-Law Society and co-captain of the university's mock trial team. After graduating from college, Josh had a lot of big plans.
First was to go to law school to become a lawyer. Then he wanted to go into politics. According to his girlfriend, Katie, he planned to run for U.S. president when he turned 35. But all of those plans were taken away one night in November 2002.
Saturday, November 9th, 2002 was a typical day for Josh on the St. John's University campus. He woke up, did his homework, went to the library, and planned to meet up with friends to attend a poker party. But later that night, Josh left the party without saying a word and was never seen again. Let's get into it.
Hours before the party, Josh's girlfriend Katie invited Josh and one of his roommates, Nick, to go over to her apartment to hang out. Well, at this point, Josh and Katie weren't together anymore. They broke up just a few weeks before, but they were still hanging out. But Josh also got an invite from another friend to go to a poker party. So after dinner, around 7 o'clock, Nick went to Katie's apartment and Josh decided to go to the poker party.
This was the last time both his roommate and his ex-girlfriend ever heard from him. At 11.06 p.m., Josh used his apartment keycard for the last time to go get some beer from his room. Then sometime between 11 and 11.15 p.m., he walked from his dorm room at the St. Maurer building to the party at 75 Meton Court across campus.
For reference here, St. John's is a small university with only about 2,000 students, so the walk between dorm buildings isn't far. Josh's building, the St. Maur dorm, was in the middle of campus, and the Metten Court building was about a five-minute walk north. But between the two buildings was the Stumpf Lake, so that meant Josh had to cross over a bridge to get from his dorm building to the other building. It wasn't a direct shot.
Now, the party was just a small gathering. Besides Josh, there were only about 10 to 12 other students there. Some of them were Josh's friends, and others were people that he just met that night. From what we know, Josh didn't plan on staying long, maybe just an hour or two tops. He didn't even bring his wallet or glasses with him, so we know he most likely planned to return to his dorm room that night. Josh had a couple of beers at the party, but just how much he drank isn't exactly known.
Some people there said they thought he seemed pretty drunk, while others thought he seemed completely sober. Either way, no one at the party noticed anything off about him. He was in a good mood, having fun, joking, and just having a good time. But here's where things got strange. Around midnight, Josh got up from the poker table and left the party without saying anything to anyone.
He didn't say where he was going or if he was planning to come back. He simply got up from the table and left. At first, most people there assumed that he was just getting up to use the restroom since it was in the same direction as the front door. But no one recalled seeing him leave. And when he didn't come back, no one really thought twice.
This was probably the first sign that something was off with Josh. He wasn't the type to just get up from somewhere and leave without saying goodbye. He probably would have at least said something to someone, but he didn't. So did something happen that caused him to leave? Did he get a phone call from someone? We don't know.
All we know is that Josh left and no one seemed to really notice. Everyone else was drinking and playing cards. Josh's roommate Nick said he returned from Katie's apartment around 2 a.m. and thought it was weird that Josh wasn't home yet. But he just chalked it up to Josh having a good time playing poker. So he went to bed assuming that he was going to see his friend later that morning.
The next day, Sunday, November 10th, Josh was a no-show for his mock trial practice, which was completely unusual. He was never known to skip out on a practice. So that's when some of his friends started to get worried. The last time anyone saw him was around midnight when he left Mettencourt. His friends also checked his AOL instant messenger account, but it had been idle for over 12 hours.
They knew he never made it back to his dorm room since all of his stuff was still there from the night before, and his car was still parked where it usually was. By nighttime, the university's dean called Josh's mom to say that she should probably report him missing since his friends hadn't seen him since the night before. So at 11.42 p.m. on November 10th, the police officially received the call, a full 24 hours after he was last seen.
They searched through Josh's apartment but didn't really find anything. It was just a typical college kid's dorm room. There were no signs that a crime took place there, and everything seemed to be exactly how Josh left it the night before. His keys were there, plus his wallet, contact lenses, and glasses. So wherever he was, it didn't seem like he planned to be gone very long. At this point, the police didn't have any reason to think that something bad had happened to him.
Just because a college student is gone for about 24 hours doesn't mean that a crime has taken place. If he wanted to run off with a couple of friends for a few hours, then he could do that. The police aren't really going to sound any alarms here. But when Josh missed his classes on Monday morning, that's when everyone knew they had a real problem.
The police brought in dogs to try and track his scent on campus, which led to a pathway between the two buildings, Mettencourt, where the poker party was, and the St. Mauer building, where Josh lived. But the trail stopped on the bridge. The media caught wind of the case within only a few hours of him being reported missing, and the police found two witnesses who might have seen Josh walking home.
Two students, one from St. John's and the other from the nearby All Girls University, were walking on the bridge between 1215 and 1230. They said they saw someone wearing blue jeans and a gray St. John's sweatshirt, which matched Josh's description, on foot walking across the bridge. And since they saw him at the exact same time he would have been walking home from the poker party, the police assumed it was him.
But after they saw him walking across the bridge, that was it. No one was with him and they didn't see anything suspicious before or after that. The National Guard and the FBI were quickly brought in to help with the investigation. The reason why the National Guard came in was because the area around St. John's is massive.
This area of Stearns County is extremely remote, with about 3,000 acres of woods and lakes around the campus. So that meant the search area was insanely large, and there were a lot of places they needed to cover as quickly as possible. And the Stearns County Police Department just didn't have the resources to do it alone.
The FBI was also brought in because Josh's case quickly became a big story. And something we'll talk about in a minute is that he wasn't the only college student to go missing around this time. By Tuesday morning, horses had been brought in to search the ravines. And by Wednesday morning, hundreds of volunteers had joined the search, mostly Josh's friends, fellow St. John's students, and his family.
It quickly became the biggest search effort the county had ever seen. Like I mentioned just a second ago, Josh wasn't the only college student to go missing in late 2002, and this gave rise to the first of many theories in this case. A serial killer was targeting young, college-aged men.
In an episode that came out just a couple weeks ago, we covered the disappearance of Chris Jenkins, another college student who mysteriously went missing in October 2002. Chris disappeared just a few weeks before Josh did and lived not too far away. Their stories are also eerily similar. Both were around the same age, both were college students, and both of their disappearances involved alcohol and bodies of water.
Chris's body was found a few months after he disappeared in a river, and Josh was last seen walking over a bridge that went over a lake on the St. John University campus. So when the news broke about Josh's disappearance, some people wondered if the two cases could be connected. There was also the disappearance of Michael Knoll, a third college student who went missing around the same time.
but nothing connecting this serial killer theory and Josh was ever found. There was also no connection with the other two missing students either. So it's possible that this theory just threw off investigators during the early part of the search and really had nothing to do with the case. All three disappearances might have just been a strange coincidence. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. Everything in Josh's life went dark after he went missing. His credit cards were never used, his internet activity completely stopped, and he never returned back to his on-campus dorm room.
Despite the months and eventually years of searching for him, Josh remains missing today. His body has never been recovered, and after two decades, he's presumed dead. So what could have happened to him? And is it too late for even forensic science to find some answers? Well, early on, one of the biggest theories was that Josh's death was an accident, and it goes like this.
Josh got drunk and either passed out in the cold or wandered into the lake that was between his dorm room and the apartments where he was last seen. As we already know, this theory was based on a canine tracking dog that followed Josh's scent to the shore of Stump Lake, where the trail eventually went cold. We also know about the two college students who saw Josh on the bridge that night.
But of course, the problem with this theory is that despite exhaustive searches of the lake, Josh's body was never found. It was also never found in any of the other lakes around the university. So if Josh got drunk and accidentally fell into the water, then what happened to his body? Or is it possible that search and rescue teams just missed him?
The police used specially trained divers and boats equipped with sonar technology to search the water. They also searched the nearby Gemini Lake. But this was by no means an easy search. We're talking about Minnesota in the middle of November, so it was cold. And a lot of the lake had frozen over.
So if Josh had been somewhere in the lake, he might have been in an area completely covered by ice and snow, making it very hard for the people looking for him. It also meant his body probably didn't surface until the temperatures got warmer and the ice on the lake started to melt. But even when they went back in the spring to look for him again, his body never surfaced. Another problem with this theory is just how much Josh had to drink that night.
Remember, some people at the poker party said that he seemed really, really drunk. So the idea that he might have accidentally fallen into the river isn't too far-fetched. If he was quote-unquote blackout drunk, he might have had trouble seeing or walking straight. He could have just taken one wrong step and accidentally ended up in the freezing cold water. But other people at the apartment remembered things completely differently and said that he seemed sober.
Sure, he had several beers throughout the course of the night, but no one at the party said that he was falling down drunk. So accidentally falling off a bridge seems completely crazy. Plus, it was a really short walk between the two buildings, and the two people who saw him on the bridge didn't notice anything strange or off about him. If he was really drunk, they had no idea.
By December 29, 2002, Josh had been missing for 50 days. And this is when a second theory emerged. Josh was killed to cover up a sexual abuse scandal. Josh's family decided to bring in a bloodhound to try and find his scent again. Bloodhounds are notorious for finding scents weeks and even months later. So even though it had been snowing, they hoped the bloodhound could still smell him.
The dog tracked Josh's scent from Mettencourt to the bridge, just like the other dogs had done about a month and a half before. But after that, it tracked his scent back to his apartment at the St. Maurer building, then to St. John's Abbey. Now, here's where it gets really interesting. St. John's University is a private religious school with a fully functioning monastery and abbey on campus.
And at the time of Josh's disappearance, multiple accusations had come to light accusing the monks of sexual misconduct and abuse. In October 2002, the university had even settled over a dozen lawsuits regarding the alleged abuse. So this is how the theory goes. According to some of Josh's friends and family, he knew about the alleged abuse and was really upset about it.
He thought the Abbey was covering it up and basically allowed the accused monks to still live on campus. He even went as far as to say that the school was trying to protect them. Josh's friends also said that he was doing research on it and planned to publish a paper about the abuse. So, what if one of the monks found out about it and did something to Josh as a way to make sure that he wouldn't talk?
Or maybe Josh himself had become one of the victims. It made sense. Josh was going to expose the monks and the bloodhound tracked his scent to the abbey. Even more, the school wouldn't allow the family to search inside of the abbey after the bloodhound supposedly hit on Josh's scent outside of it. So it seemed like they were trying to hide something when it came to Josh.
It wasn't until the police got a search warrant that they had the dogs sniff around on the inside, but they didn't find anything. The dog didn't hit on anything actually inside of the abbey. Now, long after Josh's disappearance, more accusations about the monks and sexual misconduct were made. There were rumors about alleged tunnels underneath the abbey where the abuse was said to have happened.
This also led some people to speculate about whether these tunnels might have been a good place to hide a body. Well, on paper, this theory might have sounded good. But when the police searched Josh's computer, they didn't find any evidence he had done any research on it. And there wasn't any paper. So if Josh knew anything about what was going on, or he had become a victim himself, he didn't leave any clues behind on his computer.
There was also some criticism about the particular bloodhound dog used in the first place. According to the Star Tribune, the dog's handler's reputation wasn't very good, and they argued that the best time to use these types of dogs is right after someone goes missing, not weeks or months later. So did the dog accurately trace Josh's scent to the Abbey, or was the dog or its handler wrong and it was just another dead end?
No monk was ever suspected in Josh's disappearance, and there was no evidence he had become one of the sexual misconduct victims. Theory number three, Josh was murdered by someone else. In an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that covered Josh's case, the show mentions Nick, one of Josh's roommates at St. John's. Here's how that story goes.
Josh and Nick were roommates in the St. Mauer building when he disappeared. They were believed to be more than just roommates. They were also best friends. And while Nick has never been named as a suspect, some people have pointed out some discrepancies in his story about what he said happened that night. According to Nick, he left Josh's ex-girlfriend's house around 2.30 a.m., and his apartment key card was used at 2.42 a.m.
But Katie Benson told investigators Nick left her apartment closer to 1 a.m. So that's about a 90-minute difference in timelines. Katie's apartment was only about a seven-minute drive away from the St. Maurer building. So which one is it? Did he leave around 2.30 like he said or was it closer to 1 a.m. like Katie said? Either way, his key card wasn't used at the apartment until 2.45 a.m.
which means there's a window of time that something could have happened between Nick and Josh. Now, to clarify, Nick has never been named a suspect, and I'm not naming him one now. But there's more than just issues with his timeline from that night that make some people question his story. According to Unsolved Mysteries, there were rumors that Nick and Katie might have been dating when Josh disappeared.
Of course, Katie and Josh were high school sweethearts, but they had recently broken up just a couple of weeks before all of this happened. So some people speculated about whether there was something romantic going on between Nick and Katie. And that's why he went to her apartment that night and Josh went to the poker party instead.
But both Katie and Nick have denied ever dating after she and Josh broke up. And even if they were, that doesn't mean that Nick had anything to do with what happened. Theory number four, Josh was killed by someone he met online. In 2008, Stearns County investigators reanalyzed Josh's computer. Unlike in 2002, they didn't find anything. But this time they did.
The police discovered that Josh had set up three different Yahoo personal accounts. And in two of these accounts, Josh portrayed himself as a woman. He was Dawn and used a photo of a blonde woman that none of his roommates or friends recognized. Now, what exactly he was doing online portraying himself as a woman isn't known. Some say he might have been exploring his sexuality or it might have been something else. Maybe it was simply a prank.
Either way, Josh definitely had an online personality that no one in his life seemed to know about. Not his family and certainly not his ex-girlfriend Katie. So here's how this theory goes. The police suspected Josh might have tried to meet one of these people he met online in person. It's possible he met up with them on the lake bridge that night and that explains why he didn't tell anyone where he was going.
Around the time of his disappearance, there were two reports of a man driving an orange Pontiac Sunfire on campus, dropping off other men. When campus security approached the car, one of the men who was dropped off ran away. When the driver of the orange Pontiac was eventually identified by the police, he no longer owned the car. It had been destroyed, so they weren't able to search it for any forensic evidence.
The driver also denied knowing anything about Josh or even meeting him that night. Several years later, in 2022, the police searched Josh's hard drive again. This time, they found several images of men he might have been talking to online. The police released 28 of those images, asking the public for their help in identifying them. But to this day, none of them have been identified or have come forward with any information.
So did Josh's Yahoo personal accounts have anything to do with his disappearance? And did he ever meet anyone in person that he chatted with online? Again, we don't know. We also don't know what his intentions really were in these online chats portraying himself as a woman. Now, before moving on from the computer, one really important thing about it might explain what happened to Josh.
The hard drive had been erased sometime after he went missing. When investigators initially searched his dorm room, they didn't consider it a crime scene, so it was never secured. This meant his roommates and anyone else were free to go inside Josh's room or use his computer. It wasn't until several days later that the police actually secured the room and no one was allowed to go inside.
So, this meant that people had access to his computer for at least several days. Well, when the police finally got around to searching the computer, they discovered that someone had used an internet washer to completely wash away most of what was on the hard drive. This was done just days after Josh went missing. The washer didn't delete any files, but mainly only wiped away the internet history.
So who had access to Josh's computer and why did they delete his internet history after he went missing? We might never know the answers to these questions because the police waited far too long to ever secure Josh's dorm room or consider it as a possible crime scene. So whatever digital forensic evidence there was on his internet history is probably lost.
Now for another theory. Josh's death was covered up by other St. John's students. In the episode of Unsolved Mysteries, Josh's mom, Lisa, tells the show's producers she suspects some of the people at the poker party might actually know more than what they've told investigators. She believes her son might have died in an accident, but she suspects that other students might have tried to cover it up.
She doesn't think that he could just leave the party without anyone knowing or asking any questions. Someone at the poker party probably knows more than what they're saying. This theory also makes sense, but no one knows who knows what. No one at the party has ever said they know something about Josh's disappearance, and they've all said the same thing. Josh left and no one noticed.
and no one at the apartment claimed to know anything beyond that. So to this day, the police haven't considered anyone at the Mettencourt's apartments a suspect. The biggest problem with all of these theories is that Josh's body has never been found. If it was an accident and he fell into the frozen lake, why hasn't his body ever surfaced? Nothing turned up even when the ice melted and the water temperature rose in the spring.
This was an exhaustive search that included hundreds of volunteers, the county sheriff's office, the National Guard, and even the FBI. So none of these agencies could find even a trace of him, not even a piece of clothing or anything suggesting he fell into the lake. The same thing could be said if this was a murder. If Josh was either killed by a monk or someone that he knew, what did they do with his body?
It's possible it's still somewhere out there in the 3,000 acres of land that surround St. John's University, but until something is found, we don't know. Now the last question. Can forensic science help explain what happened? Well, the biggest thing that forensic science has ever uncovered in this case so far was Josh's computer.
Even though the internet washer was used just days after he went missing, new technology in 2008 uncovered the secret chats he was having online with different men posing as a woman. So that's a big clue for investigators. But beyond that, there's really not much forensic evidence available in this case.
Again, I know I keep going back to the fact that there's no body, but that's a really big problem. Without a body, we can't say for sure what happened to Josh. Is this foul play or was it an accident? If we had a body, we might be able to say. Hopefully, someday something will turn up that can be tested and help us figure out what made him leave that party.
In December 2021, Josh's dad, Brian, sued the Stearns County Sheriff's Office trying to get access to his son's case file. Through his attorneys, Brian claimed the department had not performed a, quote, competent investigation, and he wanted access to the case file to see what had actually been done over the years to try and find Josh. But in 2022, Brian lost the lawsuit and couldn't look in the file.
According to the judge, the investigation might be compromised if the sheriff's department turned over the file to the family, and it could, quote, impede potential prosecution of anyone who played a role, end quote. So to this day, Josh's family has been denied access to everything the police have. As of 2024, there are no new updates in Josh's case.
The latest update was the release of the 28 photos in 2022. Since then, the Stearns County Sheriff's Office have been pretty tight-lipped about where the investigation stands. The only thing they have said is that Josh's case remains open and they consider it an active investigation.
Anyone with information about Josh's disappearance is asked to contact the Stearns County Sheriff's Office at 320-251-4240. What happened to Josh after leaving that party in 2002? To share your thoughts on this story, be sure to follow this show on Instagram and Facebook.
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