Awareness=Answers

There has been no use of his credit card or building card since he went missing. He is majoring in graphic design and his family and friends say he is not the type to disappear. I am sure hoping he is found and that he is safe. My gosh, you wonder what can possibly happen on a 2 1/2 block walk home between 9-9:30 on a Friday evening in a populated area on campus yet no one saw anything.
http://www.radioiowa.com/2010/0201/search-continues-for-missing-isu-student-from-grinnell

In 2006, Paul Shuman-Moore,19, a Grinnell student disappeared and was found in a CC swimming pool under a tarp. I believe they ruled this a suicide.
http://www.www.kcci.com/news/12308459/detail.html

And then there was the recovery of Abel Bolanos in Lake Laverne in 2007.

Let’s hope Jonathan shows up soon.

What can happen on a short walk home, a mental break caused by Subliminal Distraction exposure.

The problem was discovered in the 1960’s when it caused mental breaks for office workers. The cubicle was designed to deal with it but no school is aware it exists. Schools do not provide Cubicle Level Protection or warn students.

Engineers and others who have heavy computer use are at risk if there is detectable movement in their peripheral vision where they work or study.

I remember reading about the Abel Bolanos story and thinking it made no sense. The official time line the police posted was that he left a party at a friend’s apartment, walked back to Towers (his dorm). Along the way he dropped his student id card and his bank card. When he got to the dorm building his key card didn’t work on the door he tried it on. I used to live in that building and everyone figured out in the first week of classes pretty much what doors the key card works on. After that they say he walked back into campus where he drowned in Lake LaVerne.

I hope Jonathan Lacina turns up safe, but it all just is strangely familiar.

When I was a student there I lived in those same dorms and that is quite the walk he did. He would have had 20+ minutes of total walk time.

I made that same walk intoxicated during my college days and when its cold like it was that night you get sobered up pretty fast.

@Adam

According to Google Maps it is a 0.4 mi./8 minute walk from 300 Stanton Ave. to Buchanan Hall if you take a street route. Commenters have talked about “a path” that cuts through to Buchanan Hall. If Jonathan took the “path” or shortcut, it would probably be less than an 8 minute walk.
Maybe it seems longer when one is intoxicated??

We are not sure whether Jonathan had consumed any alcohol that evening. The paper quoted his dorm neighbor as saying he spent a lot of time at the computer lab studying and he was going to be graduating in graphic arts. This just gets really scary when a hard-working student walks back to his dorm, about an 8 minute walk in an apparently populated area, around 9:30 p.m. and doesn’t make it there. That is such a small window of opportunity and must have both the men and women on campus feeling unsafe-especially after Abel Balanos.

One positive is there are so many professionals (too many agencies to name) involved in the search. I believe I read there were 110 investigators on foot also. Hopefully this serious and diligent attitude will bring Jonathan home to his friends and family. My prayers go out to the family, friends and students at Iowa State.

They iowa state troppers has not said if he was drinking or not. and alot can happen in a short ride home. duh. Im from iowa and this does hit close to home considering they are thinking the smiley face killers killed him. its to soon to jump to conclusions

News reports now say that the party Jon Lacina was at had alcohol being served. People who saw Lacina last claim that he was not particularly intoxicated when he said he was “headed home” and then left only to vanish.

@monique777
Hi Monique I have read some of your other comments on this website. I appreciate the positive attitude of your post, but I also think I know what you’re thinking about this case, especially since the other 2 young men have gone missing along I-35. And it is January. And Jon fits the profile.
One thing you should be aware of…there are no current students at ISU who remember Abel Balanos. I have been in contact with a few today, and nobody knew what I was referring to. College kids are busy…and news of some random drunken drowning just fade into background noise.

http://www.kcci.com/news/22411734/detail.html

they are now reporting (see above link) that LE is investigating two other missing men to see if they are connected to Jonathan’s case; Sylvester McCurry vanished January 17th from Minnesota, and Eric Michael Peterson vanished on January 19th.

@Kristi:
I have a question on case cluster… Do the cases usually happen in clusters? And if so, are they clusters of three, etc?

@CyPhy
I go to Iowa State and to say that no one remembers Abel is a flat out lie… we all remember what happened that weekend in April two years ago, so don’t go around assuming things!!

Cally, I agree! I go to Iowa State as well. Everytime I walk by Lake Laverne (especially where he was found), that is all I can think about. I happened to be walking across the MU balcony that overlooks the lake when they closed this area and no one could come or go from this area. I watched them pull a tarped body from the lake and to say no one remembers is foolish.

I lived in Buchanan and knew Jon…this is completely out of character for him. He was quite, hard working, and a very genuine person. I miss seeing Jon and hope something (ANYTHING) is found soon. I can’t believe this is happening…the unknown of everything is really scary.

@monique777
I was referring to Abel Bolanos’s walk, not that of Jonathan Lacina.

Abel walked from a party on Hyland all the way to Towers, his keycard didn’t work the two times it was tried because he didn’t have access to Wilson (only Wallace). The last attempt to enter according to keycard logs was 3:23:12 a.m. At around 4:30am he waas spotted in Campustown by at least one person who gave a very good description of him.

Abel’s blood alcohol content was never released to the public. If you ask for it Story County says “results of the BAC are not public information.”

The thing is that if alcohol was really a factor in Abel’s “accidental drowning” they would have gone after the people who supplied him with alcohol at the party because Abel was only 19.

Sorry to make so many comment’s about Abel’s death in a story about Jonathan.

Becki
I have been tracking info for over a year now and have 136 possible SFK victims. Most were walking home from a party or missing from a bar only to be found dead in a body of water. There was one recent cluster- William Sutherland, Jordan Andrulonis and Joseph Dado all went missing from PA in Sept of 2009. The three were found between 1-2 days of their going missing. Most victims were not a part of a cluster though and no specific pattern that I can find. A professor from St Cloud State indicated that he found a pattern, but I do not know what that is. We on this blog, have looked at locations, names, initials, etc. Nothing really stands out.
Most of the victims were missing from Wisconsin, Illinois and MN, but I have some from 23 other states on my list. Most were caucasian (91%), most were drinking variable amounts, most were between the ages of 18-22. None of the victims were doing water-related activities the moment they went missing, yet their bodies were found in water. They were friendly, smart and athletic. The bloggers here on this site want to find an answer to who is doing this.

ps- my list has victims from 27 US states total and Canada.

@Adam

Thanks for clarifying! And there is a big difference between a 20 minute walk and an 8 minute walk, especially when it’s cold.

@CyPhy

Yes, you understand. The families and ISU students are struggeling through enough fear right now. If LE concludes these cases are connected, then each man’s fate doesn’t look good. Before adding on the extra fear, we need to see what LE concludes.
What is most troubling is Sly McCurry appears to be an excelling and happy teenager according to newspapers. There has been nothing written about him that would indicate he would take off on his own or was in some type of trouble. He loved his family, his “brother”/ best friend and was a joy.

If anyone is looking for a way to help, please print out flyers of all 3 men (still looking for one of them) and put them up, especially if you live near the locations they disappeared from or along I-35. Putting these flyers up may not only help locate these men or bring forth information, but may help raise awareness of young men to be safe. I’ll post the links in my next post.

Jon Lacina

http://www.news.iastate.edu/images/2010/jan/lacina.pdf

Sly McCurry

http://www.duluthmn.gov/press_releases/templates/display.cfm?id=337

Eric Peterson

Can’t find a link for a missing flyer. The link I had previously through photobucket is no longer being displayed. If anyone finds one could you post it?

If everyone reading this just puts up one set of flyers it would help a lot!

@monique777

Eric Peterson’s
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll297/Kawaii_angel_baby08/Eric%20Michael%20Peterson/MissingFlyer-1.jpg

I apologize to the ISU students for writing that “no current students at ISU” remembered Abel. That was an insensitive overgeneralization and I am sorry for it, especially since these recent events may tend to open that wound for those who do remember Abel. I must have been chatting with ISU freshmen before I wrote that. But that brings to mind an interesting challenge. “Community memory” on a college campus may be very short, 4-5 years at best, so we need to continually remind all students, men and women, to be careful, travel in groups, and for God’s sake, guard your drink!
http://www.womenshealth.gov/faq/date-rape-drugs.cfm#f

@becky
From my few days worth of reading on this, it seems like there are a few clusters, but the main thing is a lot of cross symbolism. A number of victims from LaCrosse, WI. One victim named LaCrosse. Even I think the police chief of one of the towns with an unexplained drunken drowning named LaCross. Sometimes the locations of the victims around a certain time will form a cross on a map.
http://publish.portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/04/390433.shtml

As serial killers progress in their “careers,” they usually get sloppy. They start doing too many killings, too close together and with sloppy technique. This is how they get caught.

I do not mean to imply that these young men have definitely been killed, but … if they were alive and free, they would probably let people know.

If you think back on John Gacy — these are the kind of young men he picked off.

My guess is – serial killer.

I have read that there are 125-150 serial killers operating in the USA at any given time. Male-on-male serial killers usually kill young men, and alcohol often plays a part in making the victim easy prey.

Thank goodness, people are finally waking up and looking at these three as a possible cluster. My guess is that they are.

@CyPhy
That’s not necessarily true. when Abel Bolanos died, i was in my second and final year at Iowa State. Everyone my age will have graduated this last year, leaving only current Iowa State seniors (for the most part) to be present during his death. I very distinctly remember his death and the way it rocked the campus. At that time, everyone was thinking it seemed wrong and something more had to have happened. As soon as word got out about Jon, the first thing I could think of was Abel. Most people I’ve talked to about it in Ames said the same. Of course there will be people who don’t remember such things, but it was a pretty big deal. It’s also just too strange that so many other young men of the same general descriptions go missing at the same time. When Abel went missing, the other guy from Grinnell was found trapped under a swimming pool cover. Jon Lacina is also from Grinnell. I’m sure it’s not in the front of everyone’s mind, but to me and most of my friends here, it’s just too similar.

@courtyp
sorry i didn’t see your following comments later either way, it’s hard to keep something like this going when people forget. especially from some of the first victims on the list with deaths happening more than 12 years ago.

There was another 27 year old student found in College Creek at ISU back in 2005. This was also ruled accidental. How can they all be accidental?