MINNESOTA'S Most Haunting College Disappearance – The Vanishing Of Josh Guimond

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Follow Murder True Crime Stories on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen. "Every town has a dark side." They're approaching 20 years since a Minnesota college student disappeared. As the somber anniversary moves closer, the case is getting more attention. It was supposed to be a five minute walk, that's all. The 20-year-old Joshua Gamon left a poker game just after midnight in November of 2002. He crossed a small bridge that cut through campus on his way back to his dorm, and he never made it there. More than 20 years have passed, and he's never been seen again. Investigators followed every angle, but Lake, the campus, the digital trail he left behind, and each theory almost makes sense until it doesn't, and that's the most unsettling aspect about this whole thing. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and welcome to every town we're today. We have a very strange case that leads down several different paths, where you'll have to pick which one makes the most sense to you. Let's head on over to Minnesota and see what we can figure out together. This is Minnesota's most honing college disappearance, the vanishing of Joshua Gamon. Joshua was born on June 18, 1982 in Minnesota, to Brian and Lisa Gamon. He was their one and only child, and he grew up in a house where expectations weren't loud, but they were understood. They only wanted the best for their boy, and Josh didn't disappoint. By the time he finished high school, the young man had already built a reputation for himself. He graduated as valedictorian, a top student in his class, because he set that as a goal and worked hard at it. Josh was the type who stayed after class to debate a point, who actually enjoyed the back and forth of an argument because that was a good way to learn. Even when he was little, he'd want to be like a lawyer and argue, you know? With you? When he led the debate team, he liked structure, logic, and liked that feeling of figuring something out and having a complete understanding of a subject from all angles. Because of this, classmates voted in most likely to succeed. After graduation, that's the exact trajectory he headed in. At St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, about 40 minutes from his hometown of Maple Lake, he majored in political science. The campus was close enough to home that he could drive back for dinner if he wanted, but far enough that it felt like the beginning is something bigger. And Josh talked about the future constantly, law school, public service, maybe even politics at a national level. He once told friends he wanted to run for president by the time he was 35. It wasn't bravado, it was planning, it was Josh, ambition wasn't a fantasy, it was something he mapped out in steps. In St. John's, if you don't know, it's an all-male university, but it shares a campus with its sister's school, the College of St. Benedict. And that mattered to Josh because his high school girlfriend had been accepted there. So when they both moved to Collegeville, they weren't stepping into College alone. And they were starting the next chapter side by side. And so as far as anyone knew, everything in Josh's life seemed more than aligned, almost perfect, really. School, relationship, and goals, the path ahead looked clear. Until one night, out of the blue, it wasn't. At the time he disappeared, Josh was 20 years old. He was living in a dorm at St. John's with one of his closest friends, another student named Nick Goral. And the two had met during Josh's freshman year and became tight almost immediately. They were both polysci majors, Nick a year ahead, and they first connected through mock trial, a kind of simulated courtroom program that attracts people who enjoy structure, argument and strategy. But from the beginning, they just fit. They studied together, ate together, talked constantly about law school, politics, and the future. And the people around them, they didn't seem like random roommates thrown together by housing assignments. They seemed like best friends. On Saturday, November 9, 2002, started out like a typical weekend. Josh and Nick wrapped lunch together earlier in the day, and then split off that evening with separate plans. Later that night, Josh's girlfriend Katie invited both of them to her place to hang out. She lived nearby with her roommate, Nick accepted the invite, but Josh didn't. See, he had already been asked to join a poker game at another student's apartment and decided to go there instead. At the time, that didn't strike anyone as strange. Josh and Katie had recently broken up after about four years together, and it had only been a few weeks, but friends said it wasn't explosive or dramatic, and they were still talking and still friendly. And college relationships tend to shift like that sometimes. So Josh headed to the poker game with his two friends, Greg and Alex. The apartment they were going to was at 75 Nell Rose Court, still on campus, about a five-minute walk from his dorm. To get there, he had to cross the small footbridge that spanned Stumpf Lake. A route students used every single day without a second thought. At around 11.30pm, Josh arrived, and were roughly 10 to 12 other people there, all guys. He recognized some faces, others he didn't know at all, and he played cards, drank beer and just hung out, nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't long after he arrived though, sometime around midnight, but I didn't know where Josh stood up from the table and just walked on out. He didn't announce he was leaving and he didn't say goodbye, so at first no one even realized what had happened. They thought maybe he went to the bathroom or stepped outside to take a call, but when enough time had passed and he still hadn't returned, they assumed he headed back to his dorm. Perhaps he wasn't feeling the cards that night, and sure that's a little rude Irish exit like that, but people do it all the time. Though, in this case, as it turns out, that was the last time his friends would ever see Josh alive again. A short time later, sometime between 12.15 and 12.30am, two individuals reported seeing a man matching Josh's description crossing the bridge near Stumpf Lake. It was the exact route he would have taken back to his dorm, and if it was in fact him, which investigators believe so, that is the official last confirmed sighting of Josh ever. And after that, the timeline goes pretty quiet. A Nick left Katie's apartment around 2am and returned to the dorm not long after that. When he got back, Josh wasn't there, but it didn't immediately raise any alarms because after all it was a Saturday night. Josh could have still been at that poker game. He could have decided to do something else, and college nights tend to stretch out like that. It really wasn't until the next morning that the absence started to feel wrong. And Josh still hadn't come back, and then later on that Sunday, there was Mark Trial. A Josh didn't miss those. Wasn't the kind of thing he ever brushed off. off because he treated it like practice for the life he wanted. When he failed to show up, that's when concern turned into something heavier. The Nick called up Greg and Alex to ask if they'd seen him after the poker game, and they hadn't. The last time anyone saw him was just before midnight, when he stood up from that table and walked out without a word. So that's when the realization settled in. This wasn't someone sleeping in. Something happened. Later on that evening, around 10pm, Josh's parents, Brian and Lisa received a phone call. It was the Dean of Students at St. John's. He told them their son had returned to his dorm after a party the night before. And he suggested they contact law enforcement and file a missing person's report. For Brian and Lisa, it didn't make any sense. Josh didn't disappear and he didn't go off the grid. He called, he showed up, he followed through, always. They contacted police immediately and then reported their only child is missing. The officers from there went right to Josh's dorm room that night, and they were conducted the initial walkthrough. It wasn't treated as a crime scene, not yet, because at that point, there was nothing to suggest a crime that occurred. They were just looking to gather any information they could. The room, while it told its own quiet story. His car keys were still there, and his car sat in its usual parking spot. And his glasses, the ones he needed to see clearly, were on the desk. There was no packed bag, no missing essentials, no sign that he had planned to leave, even for a night. Within the first 24 hours, investigators ruled out the idea that Josh had voluntarily up and left his life at school. Whatever had happened, it happened quickly. Detectives began interviewing his friends and they all described the same thing. And Josh had been drinking, but he wasn't out of control. He was coherent and walking normally, talking normally. Nothing that suggested he was in danger or unable to make it back to his dorm. Still, by all accounts, he had never made it back there, which suggests something happened somewhere right after he left that poker game. So, the search expanded. Officers, students, and volunteers began combing the campus and the surrounding woods, retracing the path from the poker game to the bridge over Stump Lake. And for the first time, the possibility that this wasn't just a missing student, but something worse began to settle in. Bloodhounds were brought in during the first night of the search. Handlers introduced the dogs to Josh's scent from his dorm room at Elrose Court. And from there, the dogs tracked it across campus, along the path Josh would have taken after leaving the game. The trail led toward the foot bridge over Stump Lake as they suspected. And then, here's the important part. In the middle of that bridge, the scent stopped completely. The dogs circled there. Handlers gave them room to re-acquire it, and they couldn't. So, from there, the search moved outward. Law enforcement was joined by family members, friends, students, and volunteers. They combed through the wooded areas, walking paths, the shoreline, and the campus grounds in a circle, with that bridge at the center of it all. Nothing turned up. No personal items. There was no sign of a struggle. There was no physical evidence to suggest where Josh had gone after stepping onto that bridge. As investigators worked through the possibilities, the most obvious theory rose quickly to the surface. That likely, an accident had happened in the water below. Because the scent ended above the lake, authorities considered whether Josh might have fallen from the bridge or slipped along the shoreline in the dark. So, divers were brought in. Boats equipped with sonar, scanned below the surface. The lake was searched repeatedly. Still, they found nothing. Now, Stomph Lake isn't all that big. Man only has a maximum depth of around 36 feet, with the average being around 8-10 feet. If he was down there, they should have found him. Over the years, it was searched again and again, but each time the result was the same, no trace of Josh. As months turned into years, investigators began to publicly question the drowning theory. Now, the bridge had protective walls. It wasn't especially high, but it wasn't easy to simply stumble over. It would have had to climb or lean deliberately over the edge. Could he have fallen? Possibly. But he had been pushed, also possible. But even in those scenarios, when he pointed at the same lingering question, if Josh had entered the water that night, why had nothing surfaced? So, really what happened? The answer is nobody knows. Eventually, officials stated that accidental drowning seemed unlikely. It was hard to fall in and no sign of them in the water, though the theory never fully disappeared. And not because it was strong, because it's not. But, because there was no clear alternative, every scenario just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. For example, at the same time, another theory began to circulate, one that reached beyond this campus. In the early 2000s, several college-daged men went missing across parts of the Midwest under somewhat similar circumstances. They had been out with friends, and they separated from their group. They never made it home. One of the most widely discussed cases was that of Christopher Jenkins, a 21-year-old University of Minnesota student who disappeared in Minneapolis in October of 2002, just weeks before Josh. Jenkins' body was later recovered from the Mississippi River, and his death was eventually ruled a homicide, though it was initially classified as accidental. Because of the overlap in age, timing, and general circumstances, some began to wonder whether these disappearances were connected. A law enforcement, however, has never confirmed any link between Josh's case and Christopher Jenkins, or any of the other missing men. No evidence has been presented tying them together. The similarities remain largely circumstantial, but, in the absence of answers, patterns, real or perceived, they tend to take hold. Now 50 days after Josh disappeared, his family requested another search using bloodhounds. Even weeks after a person vanishes, trained scent dogs can sometimes pick up a trail, especially in cold weather when scent degradation slows. This time, the dogs again began at Melrose Court. They followed Josh's scent across campus, but instead of ending at the bridge, the trail, they continued, and let investigators toward St. John's Abbey. The St. John's University is a Catholic institution, and the Abbey, a Benedictine monastery, sits directly on campus grounds. By the early 2000s, the Abbey was already facing scrutiny, allegations of abuse involving clergy at surface over the years, with lawsuits filed by former students who claimed misconduct dating back decades. The institution's history was complicated and painful for many. Because of that history, when the dogs led toward the Abbey, it immediately raised concern for Josh's family. According to reports, investigators sought permission to search inside the buildings, but a request was denied. Josh's parents, the refusal, felt unsettling. Their son was missing, and the school had a student missing. The scent trail had pointed in that direction, so why couldn't they look around? As media attention grew, and public pressure increased, authorities were eventually allowed to go in and search, but Josh was not there. No evidence was found linking the Abbey or its clergy to his disappearance. Still for some, including members of Josh's family, the moment lingered, not as proof of wrongdoing, but as another unanswered threat in a case already full of them. In a case with no clear answers, something else happened that added another wrinkle to this whole thing that's worth mentioning. An investigator's later took a closer look at Josh's computer they found something unexpected. Several days after Josh disappeared, a data wiping program had been run on the machine. In 2002, software like that wasn't automatic. He couldn't set a date in time for it to run, then say, "disappear," and while he was gone, had his hard drive wiped out. It had to be intentionally installed and deliberately executed. Its purpose was simple, to permanently delete files and erase browsing history in a way that made recovery difficult, which raised a very interesting question. If Josh was already missing, well, who accessed his computer? More importantly, why? Investigators were never able to determine exactly when the program was run or who initiated it. What they could say was that the activity occurred after Josh had vanished. But once again, this case shifted. Because now there was digital interference layered on top of an already mysterious disappearance. By 2008, six years had passed, and technology had advanced. Forensic tools were better than they had been in 2002, so investigators reopened Josh's hard drive and examined it again using newer methods. This time, they found more. Josh had been using Yahoo Personals. In fact, he had created multiple accounts. One used his real first name, and the other used female personas with usernames such as Kuchiku 2002 and Queen Girl Big Jugs. And using these profiles, he had been communicating with adult men while posing as a woman. Investigators also reviewed his internet history, and found his viewing habits included both heterosexual and homosexual content. Based on this, police believed Josh may have been privately exploring his sexuality. This information didn't indicate any wrongdoing, but it did open up another line of inquiry. Investigators began asking whether Josh may have met someone through these online interactions. Could he have planned to meet someone that night? Someone he met online. If he was exploring this side of himself in secret, well, he could explain why he was so secretive when he left that poker game, just exited without a word. And if he did meet up with someone, put it escalated into something dangerous. There was no direct evidence that Josh met anyone through Yahoo Personals, but the possibility could not be ruled out. This prompted detectives to revisit campus security reports from around the time Josh disappeared. At St. John's University, campus security was handled by life safety services. Investigators reviewed incident reports from 2002 looking for anything unusual. They found two reports that stood out. Both of them described a car repeatedly seen in a poorly lit area on the outskirts of campus. This area was known as a quiet spot where people sometimes met discreetly. In both reports, the vehicle was described as an orange Pontiac sunfire. During one incident, campus security approached the park car. A college-daged male exited the passenger side and just ran away. He was never identified. In a second incident, the same vehicle was stopped again. Another college-daged student was sitting in the passenger's seat. That individual was also never identified. In both cases, the driver told security that he was dropping off students on campus and he was described as an older male. Police later tracked down and spoke with the driver who repeated the same explanation and his identity has never been publicly released. Investigators wanted to examine the vehicle to see if there was any evidence connecting it to Josh, but unfortunately, the car no longer existed and had been crushed. Police asked anyone who may have had contact with that vehicle in 2002 to come forward, as of now no public information has been released indicating that anyone did. Investigators also attempted to determine whether the driver of the Pontiac sunfire had interacted with Josh through YahooPersonals, but they found no evidence linking him to any of Josh's online accounts. However, while reviewing Josh's computer data, investigators found something else. Stored on his hard drive were photographs of 28 unidentified men. The images were not publicly released until 2022, when Josh's case was featured in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix. Just last week, Sterns County deputies released photos from GIMO's computer hoping that someone will recognize one of these faces. Authorities stated they simply wanted to speak with these people as part of the investigation. As of now, law enforcement has not released information indicating whether any of the men have been identified. And so, more than 20 years after Josh Command disappeared, the investigation remains open. This case is a tough one because every angle doesn't really make sense and yet we know something happened to Josh. From what I can tell, yet a lot going for him, to the idea of a voluntary disappearance of any kind seems unlikely and he was following a path he had planned out. But then again, that's just what we see on paper and in the reports. The truth is we really never know what someone is doing behind closed doors, in case in point all those pictures and chats he had online. And no one close to him knew he was doing that, which means the only other people involved in that part of Josh's life were the people on the other side of the screens he talked to. Did he meet up with someone who had dark intentions and the foresight and ability to erase his computer to cover their tracks? Maybe. But as of now, that is just speculation. And more than two decades later, that uncertainty is the most unsettling part of this whole story. So that's going to do it for this week's episode of Every Town. Hope y'all enjoyed it. And if you did, we'll dig around because we have a bunch of other true crime stories that you have to hear to believe. Appreciate you very much, so thanks for tuning in. Remember to come on back next week for another episode of Every Town for what's scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.