MN MN - Joshua Guimond, 20, Collegeville, 9 Nov 2002 - #2

[Ciriii57]

no i think its a good suggestion,it would be interesting to know the music,but i know women who listened to 'emo' music and they were happy and they just loved that genre.i think the fact someone has been using the computer means josh or someone else was in st maur house and i think it gives a good indicator of what time the crime took place,although i think its prior to 2.42 am.i wish we know if josh got home because in the beginning,i didnt think he did....but now....i am changing my mind and think him getting home is likely.as we said...i just cant figure out the keycard situation.the door must have been pinned open. i cant think of any other way

Can you remind me; if Josh got home at around midnight (ish) that night, was anyone else at Maur House, or was he totally alone in the place? I was thinking maybe someone was out having a cigarette and was holding open the door. Of course this doesn't work if there was no one at all home.

Also Regarding smoking-do we know if Josh was a smoker (besided celebratory cigars). I was wondering if he had also gone out for a quick smoke, which he is why he took nothing with him, and was taken by someone waiting in the car park who saw him or something?

Of course, that all deoends on whether the college had a no smoking rule in the dorms and that is somethingh I don't know at all.

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

I don't think whether Josh was straight, gay, bi, trans or whatever is important. But I do think there might be some relevance in whether what he was doing as a result endangered him and I think there is a definite chance that it could have done.
Everyone back then was chatting online and downloading pornog raphy. But Josh was doing something beyond this, he was pretending to be a different gender and we aren't sure why or what he was up to as well as the other stuff with random people online. He was not telling his friends about it either and he had reported someone for something and deleted his account...there was something happening that we don't yet have a clear picture of.

i hear you. lets roll with this theory (and after, return back to where we were). its definitely weird that josh reported someone and deleted his account, i agree 100%. i dont think anyone can deny that

josh havign a fake profile online...could it be a prank? also, how would anyone know who it really is? this is where this theory falls down. if i put up a fake profile now and began talking to you (as a woman) you wouldnt know who i am, or where i live, or anything about me aside from the information i put up on the fake profile. i think the chances of someone discovering its josh are extremely slim (not impossible) but extremely slim (just my 2 cents!)

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

Can you remind me; if Josh got home at around midnight (ish) that night, was anyone else at Maur House, or was he totally alone in the place? I was thinking maybe someone was out having a cigarette and was holding open the door. Of course this doesn't work if there was no one at all home.

Also Regarding smoking-do we know if Josh was a smoker (besided celebratory cigars). I was wondering if he had also gone out for a quick smoke, which he is why he took nothing with him, and was taken by someone waiting in the car park who saw him or something?

Of course, that all deoends on whether the college had a no smoking rule in the dorms and that is somethingh I don't know at all.

i dont think its officially known how many people were at maur house at midnight....everything i read points to just 1 other student. i believe 1-2 were away from campus and greg/alex were at metten ct. nick was at katies. so if josh returned back to st maur, there is 1 student only i think was still there.

going out to smoke - that seems plausible.i do believe josh left the room either voluntarily or involuntarily and was taken off campus.i used to believe he was still on campus,but the lakes were searched, campus was searched,and there was no evidence of josh in the lakes.and this is why i rule out the 4 men in the car scenario.if josh left his room voluntarily or involuntarily,he wouldnt be near an area where a car could pull up.and i highly doubt a car with 4 men would grab someone right outside their accomodation its too risky (in my opinion)

 

[ChatteringBirds]

back in 2002,meeting people online wasn't really a thing.

Back around 2002, meeting local people online was actually a big thing where I lived. I made some friends that way in the early 2000's. You would just look for local chatrooms back then and arrange a meet-up.

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

Back around 2002, meeting local people online was actually a big thing where I lived. I made some friends that way in the early 2000's. You would just look for local chatrooms back then and arrange a meet-up.

prior to tinder/bumble and a host of other dating apps, meeting people online wasn't 'normalised' yet. so it decreases the chances in this very specific case. i am not dismissing your comment though - there's a big difference and distinction - in your case, presumably you didn't set up a fake profile? you actually met people and showed your real face and interests? that's the difference.

i dont believe josh went to the trouble of creating female profiles with the intention to meet anyone. what his intention was? who knows. maybe we'll never know. but i dont believe he was going to attempt to meet a man and say "hi i'm josh... i was just pretending to be gwen...im not really a girl, i'm a guy!". I don't buy that for one second and think its sending us all off the trail.

 

[Ciriii57]

i hear you. lets roll with this theory (and after, return back to where we were). its definitely weird that josh reported someone and deleted his account, i agree 100%. i dont think anyone can deny that

josh havign a fake profile online...could it be a prank? also, how would anyone know who it really is? this is where this theory falls down. if i put up a fake profile now and began talking to you (as a woman) you wouldnt know who i am, or where i live, or anything about me aside from the information i put up on the fake profile. i think the chances of someone discovering its josh are extremely slim (not impossible) but extremely slim (just my 2 cents!)

Yes, I take your point there. Especially in 2002...there wasn't really a way to track down who and where he was based on a profile.
The only way was for him to have given his identity and location to someone. We don't know if he did that, but it wouldn't make much sense to do so if you are pretending to be someone you are not. There is a chance he was meeting someone he had met genuinely who knew who he was. But again..there is 0 evidence this was the case. It does seem to be the case that he had had some kind of "problem/issue" with someone on yahoo and it spooked him enough to get off yahoo. I would really like to know what that was because that might have some significance. I rwally wonder what exactloy he was reporting them for?

BBM your quote above
A Crazy Out-there theory of mine--Yes, what if it was a prank! Might the seemingly unrelated things be related? Might Josh's strange computer activity actually relate to someone on campus? Might that person then have also been the one to have caused harm to him?

 

[Ciriii57]

this is why i rule out the 4 men in the car scenario.if josh left his room voluntarily or involuntarily,he wouldnt be near an area where a car could pull up.and i highly doubt a car with 4 men would grab someone right outside their accomodation its too risky (in my opinion)

Great reasoning, yes I agree. If we place Josh in his room at that time then it is highly unlikley these people were also on campus. Their attempted abductions seem to have occurred to people walking along roads. That would place us back to Josh walking back to Maur House-but then we lose any explanation of the music/TV/computer use. Yes, looking at it like that, it doesn't make sense. I agree.

i dont think its officially known how many people were at maur house at midnight....everything i read points to just 1 other student. i believe 1-2 were away from campus and greg/alex were at metten ct. nick was at katies. so if josh returned back to st maur, there is 1 student only i think was still there.

That one student could be so helpful! Presumably he would remember if he let Josh in, if he had the door propped open etc. I assume LE did actually ask him these pertinent questions?
If he remained there all night then he should have witnessed any comings and goings too. But again...he would have mentioned this. Unless he is our culprit that is.......

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

Yes, I take your point there. Especially in 2002...there wasn't really a way to track down who and where he was based on a profile.
The only way was for him to have given his identity and location to someone. We don't know if he did that, but it wouldn't make much sense to do so if you are pretending to be someone you are not. There is a chance he was meeting someone he had met genuinely who knew who he was. But again..there is 0 evidence this was the case. It does seem to be the case that he had had some kind of "problem/issue" with someone on yahoo and it spooked him enough to get off yahoo. I would really like to know what that was because that might have some significance. I rwally wonder what exactloy he was reporting them for?

BBM your quote above
A Crazy Out-there theory of mine--Yes, what if it was a prank! Might the seemingly unrelated things be related? Might Josh's strange computer activity actually relate to someone on campus? Might that person then have also been the one to have caused harm to him?

i would also like to know what he was reporting them for, but i dont think we'll ever know. one thing we really should consider....is that just because he reported them doesnt mean they did anything directly to him. for example,i have personally reported accounts that show animal abuse or gore videos...they havent talked to me or harmed me personally, but ive reported accounts for that. but the fact he deleted his yahoo afterwards...its a bit of a mystery. im not sure we will ever solve that one if i am honest

about the prank theory, thats a possibility. cant rule it out completely. but i read back a page or so and look at three things you said better than i could explain them!!! who had the most motive and opportunity. and for me personally (this is just my own personal opinion) in this very specific case, i am not convinced someone on campus saw the profile and wanted to kill whoever was behind it. not ruling it out, but i just feel its a little bit less likely that what weve uncovered so far!

 

[Ciriii57]

prior to tinder/bumble and a host of other dating apps, meeting people online wasn't 'normalised' yet. so it decreases the chances in this very specific case. i am not dismissing your comment though - there's a big difference and distinction - in your case, presumably you didn't set up a fake profile? you actually met people and showed your real face and interests? that's the difference.

i dont believe josh went to the trouble of creating female profiles with the intention to meet anyone. what his intention was? who knows. maybe we'll never know. but i dont believe he was going to attempt to meet a man and say "hi i'm josh... i was just pretending to be gwen...im not really a girl, i'm a guy!". I don't buy that for one second and think its sending us all off the trail.

Haha while I can say for sure (in the UK anyway) I was very much meeting strangers online for a hook up (sounds so dangerous now I say it!) in my local area and there were a number of sites to use...I can also say that the idea of someone pretending to be a different gender is not very likely. People lied about age, weight etc...but I never heard of anyone lying about gender. And there's not a shred of evidence that Josh was trans or dressing as a female so I do think as soon as someone saw Gwen and realised it was Josh...they'd have run a mile!
I don't think they would have murdered him for this UNLESS they were in the middle of getting down and dirty and that's when they discovered he was a male. But this is soooooo unlikely as to be not worth discussing. I don't think Josh was pretending to be female in real life.

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

Great reasoning, yes I agree. If we place Josh in his room at that time then it is highly unlikley these people were also on campus. Their attempted abductions seem to have occurred to people walking along roads. That would place us back to Josh walking back to Maur House-but then we lose any explanation of the music/TV/computer use. Yes, looking at it like that, it doesn't make sense. I agree.


That one student could be so helpful! Presumably he would remember if he let Josh in, if he had the door propped open etc. I assume LE did actually ask him these pertinent questions?
If he remained there all night then he should have witnessed any comings and goings too. But again...he would have mentioned this. Unless he is our culprit that is.......

BBM - this certainly could be another angle.the question is,who was this student, did he have any motive?

i think this case is solved by: means, motive, opportunity,connecting the tiny details such as timestamps (or lack thereof) along with any other evidence and maybe some seemingly unrelated evidence.

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

Haha while I can say for sure (in the UK anyway) I was very much meeting strangers online for a hook up (sounds so dangerous now I say it!) in my local area and there were a number of sites to use...I can also say that the idea of someone pretending to be a different gender is not very likely. People lied about age, weight etc...but I never heard of anyone lying about gender. And there's not a shred of evidence that Josh was trans or dressing as a female so I do think as soon as someone saw Gwen and realised it was Josh...they'd have run a mile!
I don't think they would have murdered him for this UNLESS they were in the middle of getting down and dirty and that's when they discovered he was a male. But this is soooooo unlikely as to be not worth discussing. I don't think Josh was pretending to be female in real life.

agree 100%. i do have some solid theories on why josh did this, but i could spend 3-4 pages explaining it and the conclusion would be exactly the same as yours. i dont think this is going to lead us to the culprit

 

[Ciriii57]

who had the most motive and opportunity.

TBH I feel like we just explored the other theory (computer chatting and dating etc), which I thank you for thrashing it out, and I am still not convinced on it. Whereas when I come back to Nick I am all "Red Flag, Red Flag". He (or possibly another student) is still the only person who seems to have had:

• Motive (an argument he lied about, Katie and maybe something else we are unaware of too related to college)
• Means (a vehicle to dispose of a body/transport Josh off campus as well as evidence)
• Opportinity (as his friend and roommate he could get close to Josh, he had easy access to Josh and he has a significant amount of unaccounted time with which to do something)

I can't think of anyone else who fits in with this. Even if someone else had an unknown motive and means; they had no opportinity (ie their time was accounted for that night). If he is not our guy then there is alot of unfortunate coincidences that make him appear like he is.

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

TBH I feel like we just explored the other theory (computer chatting and dating etc), which I thank you for thrashing it out,

right back at you sir! i take every single comment and analyse the crap out of it and attack it from every angle to see where it falls down (my own ideas and opinions included, i attack them too, daily). and as you say...the one thing that i cant break down is this.

but if we are anywhere close to the truth,that would make this extra sick and warped

FindJoshua.com - Message Board Archive

because nick does appear in the message boards and he created a poem about josh

 

[cenazoic]

I never heard of anyone lying about gender. [online]

It is very very common! I’ve been online since the late 1980s, and men, in particular, seem to do this with some frequency. It happens in places like Xbox Live, etc. Kicks, attention, who knows? Women do it too, mostly to avoid being targeted for unwanted attention from men.

See also:

Psychology of Cyberspace (1996). - this is an entire book written by a psych professor, scroll down to the “Online Gender Switching” chapter for most relevant.

Other examples from popular press:

Why do Men Pretend to be Women Online? (2013)

Why are Straight Men Using Lesbian Dating Sites? (2013)

(Amusing quote from the 2013 Salon article: “Markus Frind, founder of the immensely popular dating site Plenty of Fish, who explained his reason for shutting down the site's casual sex section by announcing that of the site's 3.3 million daily U.K. users, there are only 6,041 "women" looking for a no-strings hookup -- and, even still, many of them are actually men. He told users that the "Intimate Encounters" section "can be summed up as a bunch of horny men talking to a bunch of horny men pretending to be women." )

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

- I used "Gwen" for simplicity sake. The full name he used was "GwenGirlBigJugs" and featured a pornographic image of a woman on a couch as his profile pic.

quoting darkjodo's comment for context.if there was an obvious pornographic image of a woman,theres a low chance anyone thought it was a real person behind that account (in my opinion)

It is very very common! I’ve been online since the late 1980s, and men, in particular, seem to do this with some frequency. It happens in places like Xbox Live, etc. Kicks, attention, who knows? Women do it too, mostly to avoid being targeted for unwanted attention from men.

clipped your post, and yes, its common to a certain degree, i agree, but we need to ask ourselves objectively, how many of those people are targeted and disappear in a case like this? (i know you werent saying that, but im just swinging it back to this case)
as you correctly say,women pose as male accounts sometimes or dont speak on online video games to avoid unwanted attention. but when you add the context above, that the profile picture was a pornographic image, it just makes me think it was a prank which most mid-high level intelligent guys wouldnt fall for

 

[Ciriii57]

because nick does appear in the message boards and he created a poem about josh

I couldn't find the poem but I did check out some of the messages he, Katie, Dana and others who knew Josh posted and I struggled to read them; heartbreaking how in the early days his friends were desperately wishing he would come home to them.
Unfortunately-it has again made me doubt Nick's guilt! Not on an evidential level, but a human one LOL
I would say that his posts that I read came across more robotic sounding and factual/legalistic than some others. But I genuinely believed that he missed his friend.

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

I couldn't find the poem but I did check out some of the messages he, Katie, Dana and others who knew Josh posted and I struggled to read them; heartbreaking how in the early days his friends were desperately wishing he would come home to them.
Unfortunately-it has again made me doubt Nick's guilt! Not on an evidential level, but a human one LOL
I would say that his posts that I read came across more robotic sounding and factual/legalistic than some others. But I genuinely believed that he missed his friend.

you're from the UK, you remember Ian Huntley's case. could we be seeing the same thing here? i have no bias to anyone (not saying you do), but i could read 1000 messages on a message board from anyone saying how much they miss josh and it doesnt wash with me. everyone is a suspect unless proven otherwise in my view

 

[Ciriii57]

you're from the UK, you remember Ian Huntley's case. could we be seeing the same thing here? i have no bias to anyone (not saying you do), but i could read 1000 messages on a message board from anyone saying how much they miss josh and it doesnt wash with me. everyone is a suspect unless proven otherwise in my view

Originally I am yes Yes I remember that creep well and him inserting himself right into the case!
Yes, I see what you mean. It would appear strange if Nick was the only friend not posting anything on the message board, he would almost by force have to appear as concerned and heartbroken as everyone else.

Haha I totally agree with you, everyone is a suspect, It wasn't the people or what they wrote actually that I found difficult (I have no feelings to them either way)-it was the fact that Josh was never going to be able to read these messages that were aimed at him to come home which were written 20 years ago..I think it was the lost hope.....Haha sorry...sentimental nonesense I know!

 

[puzzleworldplanet]

Originally I am yes Yes I remember that creep well and him inserting himself right into the case!
Yes, I see what you mean. It would appear strange if Nick was the only friend not posting anything on the message board, he would almost by force have to appear as concerned and heartbroken as everyone else.

exactly this. Ian huntley went as far as being interviewed on tv, faking concern and all the while, it was him.it just has some eerie similarities if you ask me. i think it was formerpolice or another user who mentioned, i think we should explore the actions nick took on nov 10th,because the actions he took seem off to me

Haha I totally agree with you, everyone is a suspect, It wasn't the people or what they wrote actually that I found difficult (I have no feelings to them either way)-it was the fact that Josh was never going to be able to read these messages that were aimed at him to come home which were written 20 years ago..I think it was the lost hope.....Haha sorry...sentimental nonesense I know!

oh i know those messages are heartbreaking.family and friends all wishing josh would return home.its a very sad case but thats why im sure josh is looking down on us all grateful that we are not giving up, ever

 

[Ciriii57]

i think we should explore the actions nick took on nov 10th,because the actions he took seem off to me

I know very little about anyone's specific actions in the days immediately after Josh's disappearance excepot what has been stated basically in MSM, but I would really like to know. When you have time (or inclination) could you say what he did do/didn't do that seem off?