Gulp....double gulp, apparent AT passed away very very recently.
Thank you for sharing. I am far removed from the town where I grew up and it was not on my radar. I didn't keep any overlapping friend groups with him, for what I hope is obvious reasons.
I also just thought I'd confirm for transparency purposes for the sleuths here that I did let Ian know who I was; I realize in hindsight I looked a little suspicious concealing my identity and apologize for that. For the context of the public forum, I was in high school at the same time as both Colin and Ian and knew/know them both. I'm not sure if that is a claim large enough to need mod proof, but if so, let me know. I'm not particularly useful with any local Tupper Lake information now that Ian posts here, but I'll check-in occasionally to check on the case.
As a complete aside, while I often find myself very uncomfortable with True Crime communities (I am sure due to knowing Colin), I appreciate that you guys do seem to listen to Ian and local sources. I've read a couple posts on other websites and found it very frustrating some of the comments that come out of it, mostly how the revert to Occam's razor.
So, if it helps, I can give a few more comments I can give as a local who is about Colin's age, since the circumstances around his disappearance comes up a lot in discussion. I'm sure Ian has addressed some of it, but from another perspective: every single kid in Tupper Lake did exactly what Colin did that night, and we all did it like, every weekend. I
hated bringing my coat anywhere growing up because it was so bulky and took forever to take on or off, I'd take freezing for a few minutes over dealing with it any day of the week. And to be honest, you were probably still cold wearing your coat in a Tupper Lake winter anyway, what difference did it make? I regularly had to walk to school in the morning when it was -35F outside. IIRC, that night was pretty balmy by Tupper Lake standards, and teenage boys run like sweaty furnaces 90% of the time anyway. I'm more shocked he wasn't wearing shorts like most Tupper Lake teenage boys in March than I am by the alleged lack of Colin's coat.
I walked home from friend's houses at 1:00am on the other side of town all the time; there were only a handful of employers in TL that all of our parents worked at, and most of those places had super early shifts that may or may not give your parents the full weekend off. I was never allowed to take the car because my mom had to get up at something like 4:00am. And, Tupper Lake is in a high poverty area, often the same rate of poverty as the Bronx in NYC. Some kids had their own cars, but I'd say most of us didn't. If you needed to go somewhere after your parents went to bed and they didn't want you to have the car (either because they couldn't risk missing work if something went wrong, or they didn't trust you, or you couldn't drive), you were walking home, regardless of weather or hour. It was totally normal.
I also only had cheap flip phones throughout high school because it was so hard to get service in the area anyway; we really were always climbing on things and waving our arms trying to get a text or call to go through. I once even flipped over a desk in high school because I stepped on a weak part and flipped it over while trying to send a text to my parents. That hurt.
Our PE classes in school, starting in Kindergarten, focussed on getting us familiar and comfortable with the woods in Tupper Lake. I mean like, our underfunded and poor school literally got donations for things like snow shoes so that P.E. classes could bring us into the woods starting when we were five years old and teach us basic survival skills. I cannot emphasize how heavily "the woods is dangerous, but we will teach you how to manage it" was drilled into our head from the start of pre-K, and on top of that, most kids are forced into some sort of Boy/Girl Scouts to add onto those survival skills.
I know many people have attributed some of his behavior to being allegedly intoxicated on a variety of possibly substances, but I just want to clear the air that Colin's behavior actually seems pretty darn normal to a local who grew up in the area at the time who, to this day, has never touched any sort of impairing substance (I was an excessively boring teenager and college student; I am the DD/mom friend permanently in my friend group and always have been).
So, take all of that as you do. I don't think I shared anything about Colin specifically here, but of course, if Ian would like me to remove any of this, please let me know.
