Free The Case of the Drowning Men by Eponymous Rox Page A

was retrieved from this site . It had sustained substantial damage to its undercarriage from the impact of the gates and from barreling over them . Not incidentally , the front of the DEC building, which itself had not been broken into, would be where Szostak's cellphone was re covered . A lthough , at this specific date , he had not yet been reported missing .
    I t does seems hard to believe , in light of the above occurrence , that the Albany p olice weren’t already on the lookout for Joshua Szostak before his family actually reported him missing , but apparently they were n o t . Once the Szostak’s did contact the APD about their son’s disappearance, however, the department was quick to link the two incidences , informally identify ing the young man as the ir primary suspect in the crime and o nly slightly stepping back from this assertion when a fingerprint sweep of the front portions of the DEC vehicle ruled him out and otherwise proved “ inconclusive ” .
    “He’s a happy-go-lucky kid,” Joshua S zost ak’s aunt informed the press when interviewed about her nephew’s puzzling disappearance . Something bad had to have happened to keep him away so long, she assured reporters . It wasn’t like him at all. “ He’s obligated to his family. He’s obligated to his job. He’s obligated to his academics and his schoolwork ,” she said. “ It’s totally out of character . Totally out of character.”
    In c onducting their own search of the downtown vicinity during the days and weeks that followed , Szostak ’s parents each publicly expressed frustration and outrage at the way the local police department was handling the case, accusing the APD of being too lackadaisical about the case and of portraying their son more like a criminal than a victim .
    Mrs. S z o st ak even claimed the A lbany police had actively sought to discourage her and her h usband from gathering community volunteers to help in the early search-and- rescue effort . B ut a spokesman for the Albany police, upon hearing that, quickly co u ntered th e accusation, and adamantly insisted the APD had already employed K-9 and mounted search units as well as helicopters and state-of-the-art  sonar as soon as it was feasible for them to do so , and had found nothing more to go on .
    This well publicized acrimony would lead to a more and more fractious relationship between the Szostak’s and the Alba n y police as the weeks of searching turned into months and the family’s hopes turned into fears.
    When , finally, on April 22 nd 2008 , Joshua Szostak’s body was discovered drifting downstream in the Hudson River in another part of the state, it was with disappointment and heavy heart s that his family brou ght him home once again for autopsies and burial .
    T he A lbany P olice D epartment , clearly relieved and eager to conclude the matter, succinctly closed the case that very same day Szostak’s corpse was retrieved from the water , and cit ed accidental drowning as the cause of death, with no signs whatsoever of foul play.
    Postmortem t oxicology results delivered many weeks later showed only a 0.126 blood/alcohol level in the deceased and Szostak’s father, a skilled arson investigator himself, had in the interim come across other reports which additionally provoked doub t s about the true cause of his son’s death and the veracity of the APD’s claims .
    In the news paper s, he’d also been read ing about an ex-NYPD homicide detective who was talking about a gang of serial killers drowning college age males in the region and sometimes leaving smiley-faced graffiti on the water’s edge. So Mr. Szostak got in to his car and followed the river into the next county where his son’s body had been re covered , to see for himself if there was a connection .
    A new smiley face spray-painted on a nearby tree, a n inexplicable four-month disappearance, a questionable drowning under questionable circumstances…Szostak contacted Kevin Gannon