I didn't take a look at the map to guess which river, but it would be likely a river within the vicinity Dermot went missing.
I am becoming more and more involved with this case. Just out of curiosity, I wanted to learn more about the community in which Dermot grew up, Oglesby, Illinois and I went to their website:
What kind of shocked me, was the tag-line, "Where Friends and Rivers Meet."
Here is the website:
http://www.oglesby.il.us/
Click on "Discover Oglesby" and it talks about and shows a huge river, surrounded by large woods, Dermot Kelly's hometown. Look at all those trees in the background. Now I don't know if this is THE RIVER where the detective said he say footprints, or THE WOODS where Dermot said on that day that changed his family's lives forever where he was going to do target practice only never to return. But it certainly is striking.
A determined kid could run off in those woods and be hard, if not impossible to find. And if the whole town is full of rivers and woods, that detective could have been on to a very sad situation. I mean just to see this on the communities web page! I'm thinking OMG, could Dermot have seriously gone target shooting that day, slipped on ice or something, fell in the winter, January, 1972, and simply drowned? In my view, he was a smart kid, but he certainly did not take anything that he would need for a long journey to start a new life. The cold weather, no evidence of taking a car, leaving all of his belongings behind. How would he have survived that long with only $1.17 known to his name at the time he vanished in cold weather?
Unless he hitchhiked or had a plan to meet up with friends who were doing the same thing. You know, two or more of them got into a friends' car and planned this out. But the hitchhiking thing almost has to be ruled out, cuz I don't think a stranger would pick up someone carrying a gun. Unless Dermot just had the gun and the "say I'm going for target practice" as a ploy rather than shock his parents by saying, "Dad, I'm leaving home, I can't take it anymore, and I'm not coming back. Don't look for me because you will never find me. I have to get out of here. I can't be here anymore."
Or the gun itself, he could have just hid it in those woods and than met up with friends, left, or hitchhiked than? But the thing is, Dermot did not have enough survival possessions on him to go very far just by walking in the Winter without SOME kind of assistance for the long haul. (Food, clothes, lodging, where to go? Where to go on foot?) His options without outside assistance would be very limited.
It's interesting that the city of Oglesby, Illinois seems to be a very upscale, upper-class community with high levels of respect, tradition, and strong moral values. I will hopefully post on this soon. I need a little bit of time to think about what I just saw here.
Satch