The Briefing:
- Five homeless white men between the ages of 22 and 70 have died from blunt-force injuries or stab wounds along a roughly one-mile section of the Lansing River Trail in Michigan’s capital since October 2025 — all apparently attacked while sleeping beneath bridges in the predawn hours.
- One suspect, Edward Joseph Smith, 23, is charged with open murder in a single stabbing case; four homicides remain unsolved, and police have not confirmed whether all five deaths share a perpetrator.
- Lansing Police Chief Robert Backus publicly asked “Do we have a serial killer in Lansing?” at an October 2 press conference, triggering national coverage and a sharp escalation in trail security measures.
Five homeless men are dead. They were found one by one along barely a mile of paved greenway in Michigan’s capital, each apparently struck down in the dark while they slept under the same cluster of bridges — and investigators cannot yet say whether the same hand is responsible for all of it.
A Year of Violence Concentrated on One Mile
The first victim, Gino Chouinard, 54, was discovered unconscious along the trail on October 14, 2025, suffering what his uncle Robert Chouinard described as a crushed skull and six broken ribs. A state champion wrestler at Lansing’s Sexton High School in his youth, Chouinard had been sleeping along the trail and showed no defensive wounds whatsoever. He died at a hospital 13 days later; the medical examiner has ruled his cause of death indeterminate.
The next nine months were quiet — and then, in rapid succession, the trail turned lethal again.
Four Deaths in Weeks: The Summer That Accelerated Everything
On July 9, 2026, officers patrolling the trail found Denis Dunnebacke, 70, unconscious and covered in vomit beneath the Kalamazoo Street Bridge, with visible facial injuries. A lifelong Lansing resident who taught drums, guitar, and keyboard to children and adults for many years — and who had helped produce a pro-life recording titled Mother of Life, Son of Mercy — Dunnebacke died on July 16 after being taken off life support. His cause of death, too, was declared indeterminate by the Ingham County Medical Examiner’s Office, and investigators continue to treat it as suspicious.
Four days later, on July 13, Robert William Smith, 57, was found unresponsive and bleeding from his head at a nearby stretch of the trail. He died at a hospital four days later; his death was ruled a homicide. His cousin Teresa Sumpter told the Lansing State Journal that “the brain swelling was so bad doctors said he wouldn’t recover.”
The Arrest That Left More Questions Than Answers
On August 20, 22-year-old Daniel Lusk became the only victim found already dead — fatally stabbed beneath the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Surveillance footage from adjacent buildings captured a man leaving the scene, crossing downtown Lansing on foot and stopping at a public drinking fountain to rinse his arm, according to court records. Police identified Edward Joseph Smith, 23, from that footage, then recovered blood from the fountain and found a sweatshirt in his tent that matched what the suspect wore on camera. Smith was arraigned September 3 on a charge of open murder — as a habitual second offender — and remains held without bond pending a court-ordered mental health evaluation…