Police and family are now questioning how missing student Joseph Smedley -- found drowned in Griffy Lake this month -- ended up dead in the water and so far from his college dormitory.
Smedley, who according to his loved ones was “an excellent swimmer” and studying biochemistry at Indiana University, was allegedly last seen alive there by his Sigma Pi fraternity brothers on September 26, 2015.
He was reported missing the next evening.
Four days later, a fisherman spotted the 20-year-old’s dead body floating in a shallow section of Griffy reservoir about a brisk 45-minute walk from the IU campus.
However, on the night he vanished, Smedley’s cell phone GPS appeared to show him visiting at least two popular entertainment venues in the university town of Bloomington; none of which were near the frigid lake where he was found drowned.
The youth’s already weird missing persons case and drowning death is made even stranger though, because, just prior to his unexplained disappearance, his sister received an unusual text from him.
Her brother’s message that he was “leaving the country” immediately struck Vivian Brown as out of the norm, she said, especially because the two had made extensive plans for the upcoming week.
Brown also expressed grave doubts over the authenticity of a *goodbye* letter that Joseph Smedley supposedly left with his fellow frat members which stated the same intent.
Her skepticism over Smedley’s handwritten note is not only due to its unlikely subject matter, of course, but because “it isn’t his handwriting.”
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