The Case of the Drowning Men (16 page)

As a matter of fact
,
Joshua Szostak
never
even
made it
as far as to his
own car
in the early
morning
hours
of December 23rd 2007
, and,
from
his
last
videotaped
location, was never seen alive again.

But
this story gets
even stranger…

Around
th
e
same time
Szostak was leaving the Bayou Cafe
,
a few
miles
outside
the city limits
,
near
the Port of Albany on
the Hudson River
, a
surveillance camera at
the
S
tate Department of Environmental Conservation
facility
videotaped
someone
stealing
a DEC
vehicle from the
parking lot
.

T
hereafter, tw
o more cameras
at that
same
location
tracked
the
thi
e
f or thieves
driving
it
to
a
nearby
desolate
d
spot
directly on
the water
front
,
and
where
, oddly enough,
police
claim
no
other
cameras
we
re
position
ed
.

There
, the
driver
ramm
ed
down
a
locked
gate
to
enter
a restricted
zone
and, o
nce inside
,
quietly
parked the
stolen
SUV
and abandoned it
, apparently leaving no clue
s
as to
th
e
ir
motive
for the theft
or
whether they
immediately
walked away or
were
rendezvous
ing
with another automobile.

Soon after
this event
, a
ccording to police
reports
,
at approximately 1:40 AM on December 23, 2007,
the
stolen
DEC
vehicle
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
without delay
,
and
thereafter
vowed never to give up investigating
his son’s death
until he
had
all the answers
.

He
is still
hunting
for the truth
,
even
today
,
and has
established a
website
for
posting
updates on the
case and
for
receiv
ing
anonymous tips from the public.
To
learn
more about
his
late
son
and to view a clip of video surveillance from
th
at
night
in December of 2007 when
Joshua Szostak
was last seen
leaving the Bayou
Café
in downtown Albany
,
visit
www.JoshuaSzostak.com
.
All information submitted
there
is
reviewed and
considered confidential.