What happened to Josh Guimond? Theories around Unsolved Mysteries case

The 20-year-old went missing in 2002 after walking home from a friend's dorm. While the journey should have taken just three minutes, Guimond was never seen again.

Here's everything we know so far about the case, on which the police made new developments just this month.

Who is Josh Guimond?

Josh Guimond is a 20-year-old who disappeared from Minnesota's St John's University campus in 2002.

The student had been the class president at Maple Lake High School and voted most likely to succeed by his peers, according to the podcast Simply Vanished, with Guimond planning a future in politics and law.

On 9th November 2002, Guimond went to a party at a friend's dorm to play poker between 11:15pm and 11:30pm before walking home around midnight, a journey that should have taken three minutes.

According to law enforcement, many people at the party didn't realise that Guimond had left the party and the 20-year-old hasn't been seen since.

On the Simply Vanished podcast, host Josh Newville reports that some of the people are the party recalled Josh "implying that he had somewhere to be" before leaving the party, adding that there was "something about the way that Josh said he needed to go that it strongly suggested he had somewhere to be".

"That's all we know. And that perception could have been wrong; that perception could have been dead on. Right? We just don't know," he added.

According to E! News, Guimond didn't have his glasses or his car keys and was not dressed warmly enough to spend any length of time in the snow. There was no activity on his credit cards.

His friends realised that something was wrong when Guimond didn't turn up to the Pre-Law Society's meeting the next day and reported him missing to campus security.

A search was conducted for Guimond on security campus, while police dogs traced his scent to a bridge over Stumpf Lake, with Newville saying that the dog handler reported that Guimond "either got in a car here or he went in the water, because they lost the scent".

What happened to Josh Guimond? Theories around his disappearance

Did Josh Guimond drown?

Police initially believed that Guimond could have drowned in Stumpf Lake, given that the search dogs lost his scent on a bridge over the water.

However, Josh's father Brian said in 2017 that he conducted his own searches and hired private divers to search the laker, and nothing was found, according to MPR News.

Meanwhile, Newville has recently dismissed this theory and revealed that "even investigators at this point are acknowledging that is unlikely and haven't been pursuing that direction in a long time".

"Frankly, there wasn't really a lot of good evidence for it, other than the fact that there had been some other drownings in both Minnesota and other parts of the country," he added. "And that's not really great evidence."

In 2017, Lieutenant Vic Weiss at Stearns County Sheriff's Office told the Star Tribune that the case was still open, adding: "Whether he walked away, whether he was abducted, whether he was killed. We don't know why he disappeared."

Was Josh Guimond abducted?

The theory being explored by Newville and Josh's father Brian is that Josh was abducted.

"There were a series of attacks, and stalkings, attempted abductions of college men in the area, not just in November of 2002, the same month that Josh went missing, but, really, in the years surrounding that as well," Newville told MPR News. "And so we are continuing to receive leads related to this theory."

Meanwhile, Brian Guimond's lawyer recently said that he thinks "it's clear Josh was abducted and murdered".

"My client is hopeful that's not the case but I think it's the only reasonable conclusion. So the question is who is the perpetrator or perpetrators."

According to Simply Vanished, the night before Guimond went missing, a man was jumped by random men around his age in St Joseph, while in the same two-week period, there was another report of a young man being picked up by four men in a car and being driven to a swampy area near campus, where they told him to perform a sexual act on the driver.

While in August 2003, another man was walking to his car in a dark car park and was followed by a vehicle filled with four men.

Earlier this year, it was discovered that Josh's computer was playing music and skipping songs between 11:52pm and 12:32am on the night he disappeared, which suggests that someone was at the computer.

"From everything that I've been able to determine thus far in talking to computer experts, it is highly likely, yes. That someone had to manually press the play button and manually press those skip buttons," Newville said in his podcast.

Earlier this month, the Stearns County Sheriff's Office asked for the public's help in identifying people who appeared in images found on Guimond's computer, in the hopes that they may know something about his disappearance.

New episodes of Unsolved Mysteries are released on Netflix every Tuesday. Volumes 1 and 2 are also available to stream now. Read our guides to the best series on Netflix and the best movies on Netflix.

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