Gay hookup gone bad: the case of Joshua Guimond (still missing 20 years later)

Just three weeks ago authorities released images of men from gay dating sites that were found on Josh’s computer. The files had originally been wiped from his computer by someone (still unidentified) in the days following his disappearance. Very creepy! Who was it? This recent article also has new information.

Sounds like family or school officials didn’t want to openly admit they suspected the crime involved gay stuff, and a lot of time and energy was wasted for years trying to dredge lakes and stuff just to save face. Sad.

DO YOU RECOGNIZE ANY OF THESE MEN? (from 2002, in Minnesota)

Damn shame. Looked like a nice fellow.

He was adorable, very young, naive and closeted. Some psychopath targeted him. Very sad.

He was cute.

R3 - Sadly, I suspect a few of those guys are still using the same pic online 20 years later...

What if some of those guys are closet cases.

And are the police idiots? Second row, left. Serial killer.

I meant second row, right. But left is mysterious and creepy as well.

[Quote][R3] - Sadly, I suspect a few of those guys are still using the same pic online 20 years later...

The shirtless muscle-bound one most probably is.

R3 - Let's guess which ones are tops and which ones are bottoms!

Alright 50-something Missouri WHORES, start remembering!

Surely there had to be dick pics saved on his computer hard drive as well. Wouldn’t a checkerboard of penis close-ups be more helpful in identifying suspects? For those that use glory holes?

I had never heard of this all male christian university "Saint John’s University". Couldn't he get laid easily on campus? Or was everyone a desperate closet case? Must have been about 50% closet homos, no?

Could you imagine seeing yourself on that photo lineup twenty years later?

After watching the unsolved mysteries, I think he met up with one of the monks and Joshua recognized him and the monk freaked out

Are you kidding me? Cops freely circulating pics from a gay hook up site. This is insane.

An unspoken mystery in Minnesota.

I think solving a cold murder case, a tragic one, is more important than some rando having their photo recognized on a dating site from twenty years ago. It’s not like this is a national news story.

Poor, sweet kid. Looks like he was struggling to come out of the closet as best he knew how at that time and place, and unfortunately crossed paths with a predator. Damn shame indeed.

R18 Gay sites aren't anonymous.

[Quote]But while the Internet offers anonymity, which so many LGBTQ people take advantage of to interact in secret every day, it can also create a permanent record and become tangible "evidence," which some responders said led to their outing.

[Quote]"My mom found a webpage where I discussed my sexual orientation," said one responder. "I was basically outed to her and then my whole family because I was on this space online."

Him running away to start a new life somewhere seems unlikely, but not impossible. He may have died a few years later as a “John Doe” and was never properly identified.

“They discovered that Guimond had been spending time on Yahoo! Personals, chatting online with other men and sometimes portraying himself as a female.”

Gay face you could see from space!

[quote]It was on Unsolved Mysteries back in the day.

"Back in the day"? It was released in October.

He was a shape shifter, sometimes attractive sometimes not

[quote]Him running away to start a new life somewhere seems unlikely, but not impossible.

The specific circumstances of his very abrupt disappearance -- what he was wearing when he walked off, the condition in which he left his dorm room -- make it very clear that's not what happened.

[quote] Could you imagine seeing yourself on that photo lineup twenty years later?

I haven't changed. One. Iota.

It was summer, then suddenly he was devoured by street urchins! Save me, Dr. Sugar!

R30 One SLS reference per month is enough and we just had one yesterday.

Monks are trouble!

Where was Andrew Cunanan at the time?

^ Dead

R19 - “ An unspoken mystery in Minnesota.”

Senator Amy Jean Klobuchar is on it!

i just watched this episode a few hours ago, and it's ridiculous how his ex-girlfriend, male friend and I think one other person said they didn't think he was gay AT ALL.

HELLO, he had pics on his computer of men that are obviously from a dating website and he was catfishing these men as well. What do they think - that he was just doing this for fun? He was clearly closeted and gay, at a religious university in MINNESOTA doncha know?! Not exactly the most gay-accepting state/area then (or probably even now).

Some people are just too stupid for words.

Why does the DLer upthread think this was featured on Unsolved Mysteries “back in the day”? Is that really true?

I feel so bad for this kid. He doesn’t have “gay face” to me—he looks *exactly* like a friend of mine, and that friend isn’t gay, so when I see pictures of this kid I just see my straight friend. I don’t doubt that this kid was gay or bi though.

Thanks for that amazing "contribution" to the thread, R37.

His dad reminds me of a character from Drop Dead Gorgeous

He was catfishing straight guys

Jack, the ex boyfriend who lived in Idaho reminds me of Josh. Both had long term girlfriends who they broke up with graduation in sight and he has Gay face for days.

I actually know someone who knew this dude, albeit they were just acquaintances. I remember when this happened; the gay assault idea has always been on people's mind due to St. John housing a lot of pedophile priests (there's a great website on it, something about pine curtain). My friend described him as something of an overachiever and what would be now termed a social justice warrior. Supposedly he was doing a paper on the (then mostly unknown) sexual scandals of the Catholic Church. People suspect he had a run in with one of the kiddie-diddlers that existed on campus and met an unfortunate end. While there was never any mention of Josh's sexuality at the time, people at the time felt he was trolling the gay priests in an attempt to bolster his research. It is entirely possible he was gay, but the group of photos recovered seems a bit odd. I don't know about anyone else, but if I keep a photo from a dude, it's usually the sexy nude shots, as opposed to a simple headshot (granted they also could be cropped to exclude offensive material). At any rate, I am really happy to see some renewed interest in this case. It was really sad and scary and from what I know he was a really great sweet guy who never had any business disappearing the way he did.

Does anyone know, at that time would his computer need to have been “washed” in person with the person there in front of it, or could it have been done remotely through the modem?

[quote]Supposedly he was doing a paper on the (then mostly unknown) sexual scandals of the Catholic Church.

Very sad. He was not much older than me and only 5 hours away by car. (that’s not considered terribly far in the Midwest) I never heard of the case until now. We weren’t in the same media market but big regional stories always spill over. This must not have been big at the time.

Can’t believe how few details the linked story had.

[quote]I had never heard of this all male christian university "Saint John’s University". Couldn't he get laid easily on campus?

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University are two closely related private, Catholic higher education institutions in Minnesota. The College of Saint Benedict is a women's college located in St. Joseph, while Saint John's University is a men's college in Collegeville.

The "Unsolved Mysteries" episode said the university had only about 2,000 students at the time of Josh's disappearance in 2002. The total number of students at Saint John's and Saint Benedict's is still less than 4,000 today.

At such a small religious school, especially at that time, I don't imagine it would allow the privacy or anonymity for someone like Josh to explore his sexuality openly.

Collegeville, MN is also located in a rural area - about midway between Minneapolis and the South Dakota state border - roughly 1.5 - 2 hours from each.

Not an easy place to be young gay in 2002 - especially given the church's anti-gay teachings.

What does OP say the case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries “back in the day”? It’s case on the current season on Netflix

I think he just fell in the water

[Quote] It's ridiculous how his ex-girlfriend, male friend and I think one other person said they didn't think he was gay AT ALL.

Gay doesn’t even register in the minds of many ultra religious people—and it was more so years ago

From the Unsolved.com site:

“Joshua Guimond was excelling as a political science student at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He was just 20 years old, but already politically active on campus and co-captain of the Mock Trial team, with plans to attend Yale law school and serve in the Minnesota State House of Representatives. Josh was mild-mannered, studious, and responsible. Friends and family were only half joking when they said he might even be the U.S. President one day.”

What does it mean “with plans to attend Yale Law School….”?

I have plans to become the Queen of the World, but that’s not in my bio.

R49 that or it was a random hook up gone bad . Like the guy expected a woman because Joshua catfished him . Or he was trans and trying out a female identity online with the same deadly results in a real life encounter . I honestly think the pedo priest conspiracy angle is just obscuring the most likely scenario .

R51 I always find it amusing when a youngin’ or their parents utter nonsense like that. Probably the single most rarified graduate program in the US

And Yale isn’t taking some kid from po-dunk college just because he’s a good debater

They questioned if people had seen Josh on the night of his disappearance, but probably neglected to ask if anyone had seen a man in a wig, dress and heels looking like they were headed for a 3 AM date!

Sacrificed on the chapel altar my a coven of satanist priests

r43, it was possible if he was logged into a university server, but I'd think (and I'm going by memory here) that someone would have to hack the right university server out of all the servers active, then be able to tell which specific computer he was, on the list of all computers connected to that server. It wouldn't be likely to have happened remotely, it was probably done at the computer. And it could have simply been a friend who knew he was gay and knew he would have wanted that kept hidden, so he did his pal a favor.

If he wasn't trying to meet up with anyone and wasn't trying to have a relationship while he pretended to be a girl in chat rooms, that's not really catfishing. I mean, if I post on DL that I'm a millionaire playboy with a harem of twinks at my disposal, am I catfishing you?

Poor Josh, it's ok to young and cute and aspirational...and very naive

[quote]Sacrificed on the chapel altar my a coven of satanist priests

Ro, I know you meant "by" a coven of satanist priests or witches...it's hard to write when you're kept sedated all the time, which is actually kind of a dream of mine now

I agree that St. John's University in Collegeville, MN (not the one in New York) is located in a very remote area.

Don't you remember what an ordeal it was for Rose to visit St. Olaf?

Yes I was imagining to a possibility a friend or roommate wiped the computer thinking Josh wouldn’t want the information about his “secret life” to be discovered. But then they would have to know that it was there.

If someone who knew about how Josh disappeared or was involved and knew incriminating info was there on the computer and got worried, and wiped it… much more sinister.

R15 It's affiliated with a nearby women's college and students can take classes at both schools.

R42 I’d imagine there were sexy or naked pictures of many of these guys on his computer as well. Dick pics too. But the police can’t really put those on an online poster looking to ID people. (or maybe they caaannn…)

I wonder if there were nude or undressed photos of the ex girlfriend on the computer that he used when pretending to be a girl?

[quote] sometimes portraying himself as a female.

Not smart

Apparently he only pretended to be a woman for one of his accounts.

According to Unsolved Mysteries, the wiping of his computer was no longer a hindrance once new tech allowed programs to find what was on the hard drive

[quote] He was catfishing straight guys

Which can lead to a dangerous end, sadly.

[quote]Thanks for that amazing "contribution" to the thread, [R37].

Do you issue this response to every reply you deem insufficient in some way, or was there something about mine that really triggered you?

R70 probably b/c you stated something which had already been said. Then you followed it with something so anecdotal only you could appreciate it.

Just guessing. Not R38, who didn’t sound triggered.

So instead of just ignoring my reply and reading the rest of the thread, he had to call me out. Thanks for needlessly being cunts, both of you.

No worries. Happy Thanksgiving 🦃

I miss Robert Stack the original host of "Unsolved Mysteries" whose voice could be compelling and creepy at the same time. The original also featured a then unknown Matthew Mcconaughey

ugly nerd, who cares

[quote]“They discovered that Guimond had been spending time on Yahoo! Personals, chatting online with other men and sometimes portraying himself as a female.”

So I guess all of the guys pictured are tops.

R74, it doesn’t seem like the case reenactment that MM starred in had anything to do with this case?

The use of "triggered" above suggests the cunt stinking up this thread is the same sad, fat, unfuckable cunt that stunk up the Karen/fraus thread.

Sorry, R70, it's just that I found your post completely pointless and silly and a total waste of time, not to mention self-contradictory. And to review, your post was:

[quote]I feel so bad for this kid. He doesn’t have “gay face” to me—he looks *exactly* like a friend of mine, and that friend isn’t gay, so when I see pictures of this kid I just see my straight friend. I don’t doubt that this kid was gay or bi though.

Just to throw out another perspective on the computer being wiped clean (clearly it wasn't). When my roommate passed away unexpectedly a few years ago--and his mother and father and sister came to collect his belongings--I asked his mother if I could have his laptop. I didn't want the laptop (I had my own), but I knew he had gay porn on his computer and I didn't want this lady who was in her 70s turning it on and finding it. I had gone thru the computer beforehand to double check and sure enough there were leather daddy pix and tons of porn. I thought about deleting it and then letting them take the computer but instead password protected the computer and told them I didn't know the password. The sister messed around with it for an hour trying to guess the password and finally (rudely) told me I could have it. I honestly was just trying protect his family. My point is that someone might have just been keeping the family from seeing naughty things. Just sayin'.

[quote] "Back in the day"? It was released in October.

Newsflash R26 - Unsolved Mysteries debuted in 1987. The Netflix show is just another unimaginative reboot.

Thanks, R79. I find the majority of your posts to be bitter and rude. Everyone is dumb except you; people are too stupid to understand West Side Story, blah blah blah. You’re a miserable old theater queen with a superiority complex. There was absolutely no reason for you to single out my reply in this thread, amidst all the other inanity here and elsewhere on the site, but you did, for whatever reason.

Let’s block each other and never waste each other’s valuable (and, in your case, limited) time, shall we?

I’ll block you, R82, if R79 won’t. Bitter, rude comments are perfectly acceptable here, btw. Your comment interrupted the flow of the thread and added nothing of value. Accept it as a teachable moment. I learned to do so after having my feelings hurt. Veteran DL’ers know what I mean. Good luck here.

Returning the favor, R83. Thanks, bye.

R82, you seem to be very confused. I don't believe I've ever commented anywhere, certainly not in this thread, that "people are too stupid to understand WEST SIDE STORY," and if I had made such a comment, how could you possibly know that?

Going to watch the Unsolved Mysteries episode tonight! Thanks OP

R70 You are fine - ignore the hall monitor trolls.

Maybe those guys had all been victims of the monks!

Just watched this episode this afternoon. I haven't watched many of these newer Unsolved Mysteries episodes. I really appreciated the use of the onscreen timeline and lots of references to the map. These kinds of things are often the only way I can get the facts of a case straight in my mind.

For a brief moment when they showed the pictures of those men he had been chatting to online, I thought one of them looked like one of those other missing boys, although clearly it wasn't.

R42, that's a very interesting piece of information!

That mother's comment at the end of the episode was a bit weird: "I'm going to live in the White House, and your dad is going to live in the back of beyond." I'm assuming they had a really bad divorce or something?

R64, yeah I think the police mentioned at one point that he had pornography on his computer that ranged from hetero- to homosexual.

If the earlier behaviour of the dogs was accurate, then it makes sense that maybe he was picked up by a car on that bridge and then driven away somewhere. God knows we as gay men put ourselves into some potentially dangerous situations when we want to fuck, and mostly it turns out totally fine. But there's always the chance...

*Singing* Looking for gayface in all the wrong faces/Looking for cock in all the wrong places

I'm so glad that finally someone on one of these shows (the friend) pointed out that polygraph machines are junk science. These American crime shows always seem to put so much stock into them usually.

What would you do if your hookup died in front of you? O. D.'d or broke his neck or whatever. Now you have to prove to the authorities that you didn't have anything to do with their death- and come out to the world as a homosexual.

Some guys just wouldn't be able to go through that.

[quote] I remember when this happened; the gay assault idea has always been on people's mind due to St. John housing a lot of pedophile priests (there's a great website on it, something about pine curtain).

r42 Sounds like bullshit. Guimond was an adult. Pedophiles don't rape adult males. It sounds more like gay monks are being accused because they're gay. Is there even any evidence of pedophilia among these allegedly gay monks? Or is the heterosexist media assuming they're pedohiles because they're homosexual?

First of all St John's University is only a few miles from St. Cloud, which is one of the larger cities in Minnesota. Also, the Mississippi River runs through it, so I'm surprised people who buy into the Smiley Face Serial Killer claim haven't proposed this guy as one of the possible young victims.

It's entirely possible that he headed into St cloud to attend a party or hook up with someone and ended up over-imbibing and falling into the river. Happens all over up and down the Mississippi wherever there's a college nearby and drunken students.

But, knowing the scandals surrounding St John's University and St John's Abbey, if I were an investigator, I would look first at the monks and at the diocese. Because yes, there is a very ugly history up there of pedophile priests and monks, including ones who have had sexual encounters with St John students and with minors. I could absolutely see someone connected to the college, the Abbey, or the diocese wiping that computer in an attempt to erase any potential connections between this guy and one of their own, whom they protect at the expense of their victims. They might not have even known for sure if there was a connection, they may have gone and wiped the hard drive just in case there was.

But if the killer was a third party unrelated to the church or to the college, well - there's a lot of lakes and streams in central Minnesota to dump bodies. Not to mention forests.

R93, there is a lot of documentation about sex offender priests and monks up at St John's Abbey. A quick Google search will uncover a lot of news articles about it. It has been a scandal in Minnesota for many years. Of course pretty much every archdiocese has its sex scandals, but what made the One about St John's Abbey stand out was the fact that they were sending sex offenders there, and allowing them to teach and interact with the student body, without revealing to anyone that these were sex offenders.

It was quite a creepy case, I felt after it was over. Not hitting you over the head with it, but all that stuff about the monastery and them not letting the police search there, the sightings of a young man leaping from a car, the mysterious car itself - seen on campus several times. Actually, a lot of the time these US university campuses seem quite creepy because there are a lot of dark places people could get lost in. There was a girl who disappeared somewhere in Alaska, I think it was, that I read about, and basically between the common areas and the dorms was this almost wilderness that students had to walk through. It was kinda crazy. Must be beautiful surroundings, but so apt for mysteries to occur there too.

R93, R95 is correct, the documentation out there on St. John's and its connection to the Catholic Sex scandals is legion. The website above is behindthepinecurtain.com. Be warned, it's a tough read.

People should stop calling this a cold case just because it’s in Minnesota.

Minnesota is the Lake District of the states.