Only the River Knows

Chillingly Similar

Jeff Geesey

Even that would have been easy to accept if that young man - his name was Jeff Geesey - had been the only young college man to die gasping for breath and flailing in the icy waters of the Big Muddy. But the truth was, Dion and Geesey were just two of five athletic, good-looking, baseball cap-wearing young men who had perished in very similar ways.

Though police insisted that all had succumbed to the hazards of college drinking -- a theory supported by several officials at the university -- many in La Crosse thought differently.

In the days after Dion's death, the old rumblings returned to the community. Were the young men just unfortunate victims of a tradition of alcoholic excess at the university and in the town of La Crosse or was there something more nefarious, more terrifying at work?

Years earlier, after Geesey's body floated up onto a snag in the river where it was discovered by fisherman, residents of La Crosse had already begun to whisper that perhaps there was a killer at work in their town, a killer who for whatever reason, targeted muscular young men and took advantage of them when they were deep in their cups.

Aileen Wuornos

Perhaps, residents later told Conte at Stuff, the killer was a cab driver who lured his victims into his clutches by promising them a "safe" ride home. Maybe there was a deranged prostitute on the loose, a freeze-frozen version of Aileen Wuornos, the Florida hooker who demonstrated her seething hatred of men by gunning down her johns. Perhaps, some had even speculated, there was a homicidal cop prowling the streets of the town of 50,000 in the wee hours of the morning.