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#76 | |
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#77 |
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Robin Warder recently covered the Chad Mauer case on his podcast "The Trail Went Cold" (and if you haven't checked it out yet, you should because it's just that good!). Robin brought up some familiar narratives regarding this case and some interesting points that had been left out of the "Unsolved Mysteries" segment, but widely discussed in this thread and it brought to my mind a scenario that might be a little bit different then the one that was speculated about on "Unsolved Mysteries".
To begin with I think there is credible evidence that Chad Mauer was involved to some degree in the local drug scene prior to his death. The fact that his friends came out and admitted to his parents in the wake of his passing that he was involved in some type of drug transaction to me at least is significant. I am only just slightly older than Chad Mauer and maybe it's different today, but back when I was growing up friends didn't rat friends out to their parents for nothing. So to have Chad's friends come up to John and Dolly Mauer after his passing and inform them of details regarding their son's involvement with the drug scene to me speaks of these kids wanting to make sure that Chad's parents knew that their son did not commit suicide in a garage on the south side of Chicago. So to me that makes their statement very much credible and therefore likely truthful. The next point is one that Robin didn't elaborate on much in his podcast, perhaps because there isn't really any definitive way of ascertaining it's veracity. But one significant moment in the "Unsolved Mysteries" recreation of the timeline, is when investigator Bongiovanni is seen speaking with Chad's former boss at the bike shop. The bike shop manager relates an instance presumably regarding Chad's time on the job where "something or someone spooked him". Now what I found interesting in Robin's podcast is that there was the revelation that Chad Mauer had not been employed at the bike shop for all that long at the time of his passing. He had been working there I believe a couple of days so given that and the manager's comments, a likely scenario is that someone associated with the local drug scene must've walked into the bike shop while Chad was working and Chad had legitimate reason to be afraid of this person. Now why would he be afraid of this person? I think to tie things together you need to go back into a lot of what we have learned about Chad Mauer through the various news articles that have come out on his case. We know that according to his mother that he smoked at least a significant amount of marijuana. The way Dolly Mauer put it, it doesn't seem like marijuana was a casual libation of her son's, although that is not to suggest either that he was an addict of any type. But it does seem like having access to marijuana was important to him and as Robin brought up in his podcast it does send up some red flags when you hear about Chad having to sell off his personal belongings. The narrative that has been put out there is that Chad was looking for money for some of his athletic interests but as anyone can tell you a preference for marijuana is not going to do anything to enhance the wallet of your average teenager. Another red flag that comes up is these stories about Chad Mauer allegedly doing favors for people involved with the local drug scene whether it was being used as a runner or whatnot. Was this something he was doing of his own volition to make money on the side or was he doing this perhaps to pay off some type of debt? This is essentially what I'm getting here because while the narrative that has been put out there has Chad Mauer going to the south side of Chicago in effort to transport drugs that ended in tragedy, it could've just as easily been a different scenario. You have an individual from the local drug scene show up at the bike shop shortly before Chad takes his ill fated trip to Chicago, Chad is clearly afraid of this guy, potentially because he owes him a debt for drugs. Shortly thereafter perhaps, Chad either makes the decision to or is more than likely told to go to the south side of Chicago to settle up and walks into a trap. Perhaps Chad thought he could handle himself in this situation or maybe thought that he was going to encounter one person or a particular person and ended up likely being confronted by not only this individual but a whole gang of his running mates who demanded money from Chad. Chad not exactly being flush of cash (given he had to ask his dad to cover him for twenty dollars for gasoline) may have gotten himself into a situation where he couldn't pay these people or reneged on promises to pay these people and they beat him unconscious and then allowed him die of carbon monoxide poisoning in that garage. To me at least that makes a great of sense of you take together the concept of Chad not having access to money, having a preference for marijuana, allegedly participating in some very high risk behavior where he was trafficking drugs where the penalty for him being caught would've been extremely significant, to the story told by him former employer that perhaps in the days leading up to his death that he felt scared of something or someone and then ending up dead in southside housing project two days later? To me there doesn't seem to be many coincidences. It just seems like a well connected chain of events. |
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Last edited by DarkDante; 05-08-2020 at 05:26 PM. |
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#78 |
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Join Date: Jul 09, 2014
Location: Michigan
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Chad was probably running some serious stuff between Chicago and Milwaukee to either pay off debts or earn money to go and be a ski bum in Colorado. Stuff like pounds of marijuana, bricks of cocaine, or bags of heroin. My idle speculation would be that there was a fight over payments. Chad expected to be paid $x or for the debt to be wiped clean, whoever was having him make the trips didn't want to do that or pay him at all and a fight ensued. They probably didn't intend to asphyxiate him, they just dumped him in a running car after knocking him out and left.
Unfortunately whoever did it probably isn't alive after thirty years in the south side of Chicago drug trafficking scene. |
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#79 | |
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Join Date: Aug 22, 2007
Posts: 474
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Is there a hairstyle thread on this forum for UM? It could go a long way. BTW, I also think Chad Maurer's deathw as related to drugs in some way. |
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#80 | |
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#81 |
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#82 | |
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#83 |
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Join Date: Oct 19, 2016
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I live in Madison and have tried to find Chad's old bike shop—"Village Pedler"—a couple times when I am on that side of town. The GPS just led me to a gas station every time. The bike shop is closed down but it be neat to find the old building.
I agree with the theory Chad was killed in a drug deal that went the wrong way. Chad's segment is not only memorable to me because of the location but because of the parents taking on their roles in the segment and what scenes they had to act in. |
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#84 |
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Recently saw the Chad Mauer segment (S04). I definitely don't believe he committed suicide; it's obvious he was murdered. Hopefully they'll eventually catch those who did this. However, given that it's been 30+ years - that seems unlikely at this point.
I definitely agree that drugs were involved with his death. Here was a middle-class kid who worked at a bike shop, and probably wanted to make some quick, easy cash since he had a lot of big plans (college in CO, sports equipment, etc.). He may not have been a user of hard drugs, but was probably dealing/distributing/transporting (or involved in some other way) - which somehow led to his death. When I first saw this segment & saw where his body was found, I immediately thought of the drug angle - even before the show mentioned this. In many UM cases where someone is murdered, the person is completely innocent & may be in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc. However, in this case I think CM was playing with fire, and unfortunately got burned. He definitely didn't deserve what happened to him. But, at the same time he wasn't an innocent kid who was killed while minding his own business. |
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Last edited by Latka Gravas; 12-17-2021 at 01:09 PM. |
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#85 |
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Location: Westeros
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Given where it happened (Chicago's South Side), the likely perpetrators are probably long since dead themselves.
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#86 |
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Join Date: Jan 30, 2021
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Yea he was definitely involved in things he shouldn't have been involved in. That said, he did not deserve to die and I hope his killers are captured.
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#87 | |
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#VLSKMS
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As for the murder, the connection between the people at Chad's apartment complex to the southside of Chicago should have been taken more seriously, IMO. There would be no reason whatsoever for Chad to have traveled roughly two and a half hours to buy drugs. The apartment complex connection should have been investigated deeper, but it seems like law enforcement didn't take it seriously because they didn't believe Chad was involved with drugs. |
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#88 |
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#89 |
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It is interesting that one of the articles states that Chad may have been on the South Side of Chicago looking for gay sex.
I'm sure a good looking kid like Chad didn't have to drive 150 miles in seek of gay sex unless he was looking for a certain demographic. Now Chad was into a lifestyle that his parents were not happy about. I think Chad was just a very naive wannabe like someone mentioned earlier in the thread. I think he and his friends partied hard and liked to do drugs and wanted to be a part of something and make some money. What bothers me is the jacket. Chad's mother said the jacket found next to him did not belong to him. That leads me to believe that Chad was probably accompanied by someone on that trip to Chicago and that the jacket belonged to him. Now if the new neighbors in the complex were from the South side of Chicago it is a great likelihood they were black. Whoever it was probably didn't have a car and was using Chad to make the drug run and promised him money with no intentions of paying him? The drug deal gone bad part is probably the most logical explanation however the drugs are going in the wrong direction. No one was bringing drugs from Wisconsin to Chicago that makes no sense. Chicago is full of drugs. I believe Chad and an acquaintance went to Chicago to buy drugs to bring back to Wisconsin and Chad was double crossed/robbed. Once he got there and blew Chad off Chad probably got angry and a fight ensued and the passenger and his friends beat Chad up and knocked him unconscious. They put him in that garage and left the car running on purpose to kill him. Chad walked right into a setup. The passenger probably did his own drug deal and found a ride back to Wisconsin. I believe the passenger or one of the people who helped put Chad in the garage tipped the police off because they wanted the body to be found as soon as possible. If Chad was really about that life he would have had a pistol on him and probably wouldn't have went alone but with some friends of his own instead of a new acquaintance. I think Chad was used as an easy mark they knew he needed/wanted money and they sold him on making the trip because he had been known to make trips like that before. UM and Chad's parents did a good job of presenting Chad as an "all American boy" but we clearly see Chad was a troubled 21 year old who really didn't have much going for him but drugging it with his friends, partying and doing some odd jobs to save money for his personal interests. I don't think Chad had any intentions of moving to Colorado for college like his parents claimed he was looking to party and indulge in his pleasures whatever they may have been. All I know is that a white boy on the south side of Chicago is either a corpse or a crackhead. Even in 1990 Chicago was in the height of the crack epidemic and very dangerous. Chad was no innocent but he didn't deserve what he got he trusted the wrong person trying to make some quick cash. He was killed because of what he knew. |
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#90 |
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Regardless of whether he was driving to Chicago to drop off drugs or pick up drugs, this was an impossible mission to accomplish without getting busted. As we’ve established, it’s a 140 mile drive to get from Madison to Chicago. That’s a 2 ˝ hour car drive there, a 2 ˝ hour car drive back home and however long it would take to do the transaction. Let’s say for the sake of argument that would take 30 minutes. That would make it a 5 ˝ hour window where his boss would surely notice he never came back from his lunch break. As a result, the boss would have called Chad’s parents (had they not gone to the bike shop first) and his cover would have been blown long before he had even reached Chicago. He had to have known as soon as he left his parent’s house that he was going to be fired from his job and have a lie ready to tell his parents where he was all day.
Making the trip at that time on that day made zero sense, unless he was held at gun point and forced to drive for 140 miles (highly doubtful). Or if he owed someone money and felt he had to make the trip in order to save his life, like another poster said. According to the friend who came forward, Chad had made a couple trips to Milwaukee before to drop drugs off for money. Maybe this trip to Chicago would have involved much more money than his previous jobs and he felt the risk was worth the reward. |
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