This is getting really, really creepy. In my last post I described what happened in my neighborhood not long before I left the Quad-Cities.Somehow this blog got linked up with www.zwatch.org, a site dedicated to a missing QC man, Zachariah Furio. The site is now run by his brother Adrian, who in videos on the site investigated his own brother's disappearance.
The paper I used to work for wrote a story on the site that questioned it's validity and a reporter for the competing newspaper even suggested that I was the brother running the site. I will swear this with a Bible under my hand — I AM NOT RUNNING THAT SITE!!!
The most disturbing thing is that the picture to the left is of the missing guy, supposedly supplied by the QC Department of Biological Sciences. Never in my time in the Quad-Cities have I ever heard of such an organization, but I am positive of one thing — THIS IS THE PERSON TAKEN INTO CUSTODY THAT NIGHT IN DAVENPORT! Never, ever in my life have I been sure of such a thing.
Now I know that after years of covering trials that eyewitness testimony is the most unreliable out there, but I will never forget this face. Ever. This is the EXACT same calm face he was wearing when taken into custody.
No flashing lights. No cuffs. Masks and gloves? Is this the swine flu? H1N1, as it's known by is spreading everywhere, including 2,000 people on one college campus. This, according to zwatch, is the H1Z1. WTF is that?
Something is wrong in Davenport. There should be something out there other than unanswered questions for zwatch.org, a skeptical media because they're too lazy to look outside the usual channels, and a leak to a Web site that gets made fun or more than it is taken seriously.
If there's anything that makes me wish I had more time as a reporter in the QC, it's this. I was normally the one making jokes at the latest "panic" piece I was writing — swine flu, floods, tainted peanuts — but this is one of the few things that actually made me concerned. I doubt this photo is like that kid who cries blood.
All of the questions I was asking to my sources in law enforcement in Davenport have been met with silence except for one, which I will not name for obvious reasons. He's quit over this. To quote a voicemail message he left me, "Don't ask me any more questions about Furio. I'm out. I'm done." That was all I've got.
I'm glad I got out when I did.
