The Mysterious Death of Former Quarterback By Greg Bishop | nytimes | Published: June 8, 2013 * A condensation from a six page article: The following is a true mystery, a mystery that may never be solved. No one, after Cullen Finnerty went missing, has any inkling of how he died. Read Bishops story, and give your ideas on what you may think happened. Thanks, Agent_286 BALDWIN, Mich. The search started the night of May 26, a Sunday, when Cullen Finnerty went missing in the woods here, amid towering white pines and shrubby scrub oak trees and owls and white-tailed deer. By Monday morning, helicopters circled overhead as cadaver dogs combed through the brush below. By that Tuesday, the search party had ballooned to include 13 officers from Lake County, 22 reserve officers, almost 100 local volunteers and so many friends and family members that the assembled lost count. They fanned out in small groups, separated by 100 yards, walking the same direction, crossing square-mile sections of the Webber Township grid. Some waded through waist-high swamps. Others fought through dense foliage. As darkness approached on Tuesday, there was one final section the authorities planned to check that day. Finnerty had been missing for nearly 48 hours. The group closest to the nearest road, near enough to hear cars purr as they drove past, assumed it would never find him as it stamped through backyards, past trailers and huts and cabins and deer blinds. Among that group stood Chuck Martin, who was Finnertys football coach at Grand Valley State, now the offensive coordinator at Notre Dame, and Curt Anes, the quarterback Finnerty succeeded. The group pushed through branches, into a clearing. Aness wife, Lindsay, was between Martin and her husband. Oh, my God, she said, voice rising. Oh, my God! Martins gaze shot in that direction, and there lay Finnerty, face down, arms at his side, wearing olive waders and a camouflage jacket. It was 7:40 p.m. Lindsay Anes dropped to her knees. Her husband fought the urge to turn Finnerty over and embrace him. As the police rushed in, the group slogged back to the road. Is this really happening? Curt Anes asked over and over again. One search had ended. Another, the search for answers, had begun. So little about Finnertys death made sense. Here was perhaps the most successful quarterback in college football history, a three-time national champion who was crowned the Division II player of the decade by one Web site. He was 30, married, the father of two children, one age 2 and the other 3 months. One week earlier, the family had gathered for his daughters baptism. On Memorial Day weekend, he accompanied his wifes family on vacation. None of it made sense. How he complained of headaches and restless sleep in the days before he disappeared. How he went fishing by himself. How he ended up dead not much more than 100 yards from a road, out in the open, about half a mile west of where he docked his pontoon boat. His last two phone calls proved most haunting. One was to his wife, the other from his brother-in-law. Family members said that in both, Finnerty sounded panicked. He said he was uncomfortable. He said he ran into two men on the Baldwin River. He thought they might be following him. Finnerty was 6 feet 2 inches. He weighed about 240 pounds. He ran to fights, not away from them. Friends called him Superman and Rambo, and yet his final known actions did not square with the life he lived. Here was a man widely described as fearless - whose last known words were spoken in fear. After Martin dropped his son at school on Tuesday morning, he heard from friends who sounded optimistic. The police had not found Finnerty in the river. They hoped he was hiding in the woods. Martin stopped home, grabbed his boots and pointed his car toward Baldwin. The player he called Crazy Horse and Knucklehead and Vinnie Barbarino was out there somewhere, alone, he thought, afraid. Martin was certain he would find him, and then it would all make sense. Finnerty answered his phone for the last time at 9:36 p.m. Sunday. The police said the call lasted about 20 seconds. I dont know where I am, he told his brother-in-law, according to family members. continued:
conclusion: “His mother called. “Cullen’s dead,” she said. Finnerty’s body went to the Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids. An autopsy ruled out a heart attack. Robinson said there was no indication of foul play, no bruises, no cuts - no answers. He expected more test results that week. On Thursday, though, he sent an e-mail that said, “There is no new information at this time.” One local resident, David Tuttle, said he hunted deer with a bow and arrow from a tree blind held up on stilts. He saw a black bear in there once, but he too could not understand how Finnerty had died in an open clearing, so close to the road. “It’s so close, it’s eerie,” he said. The family wanted closure. They wanted to understand what happened to Cullen Finnerty, or attempt to. Since his death, they found out that he donated money to an orphanage without telling anyone. That he sent cash to a friend with cancer. That he stopped and helped coach random soccer practices. They set up a memorial trust fund for his children, but they did not find the answer they most sought, not immediately. The initial autopsy was inconclusive, the toxicology report negative. There was no explanation for how he died, not in the week that followed. His death remained a mystery, even as it revealed a fuller portrait of his life. “I don’t know,” Tim Jr. said, “if we’ll ever know.” ...... read : http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/s...k-cullen-finnerty.html/hp?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ...... IMO: I think that in the years Finnerty played football, he may have suffered many concussions that made him have loss of memory, direction, and it was a long arduous illness similar to returning soldiers after many deployments and being near high intensity explosions that could explain his inability to walk out to the roadway which would have saved his life. As the coroner could find no instance of any reason for Finnerty’s death without a sign of foul play, we have to assume that there was no foul play but a sudden paroxysm of an emotional state caused from his athletic injuries and leading to his death without any visible signs. He may have just laid down in the clearing, and died. But it remains an unsolvable mystery which will remain until more information heretofore has never been given. What do you think happened?
