Lansing police are investigating whether a serial killer is tied to five deaths along the River Trail, a pattern the chief says remains an open and active question.
Police Chief Robert Backus laid out the grim timeline at an Oct. 2 press conference, detailing five recent deaths along the Lansing River Trail in Michigan’s capital city and making clear that investigators are treating the cases as potentially connected.
ABC News reported that Backus addressed the public fear head-on while stressing that every case is still an active investigation.
The victims were white males between 22 and 70. Police believe they were unhoused. Investigators also suspect the attacks happened overnight or in the early morning, when the men may have been lying down or asleep.
"One question that we are being asked is 'Do we have a serial killer in Lansing?'"
Backus told the public the department is not dismissing that question.
"What we need the public to know is that we are investigating all of these cases. They are all active investigations, and we are looking at the idea or the possibility that these may be related cases."
The first case Backus described dates to Oct. 14, 2025. Police got a call about an injured person and found 54-year-old Gino Chouinard with injuries to his face. He died on Oct. 27. The medical examiner’s office issued a finding of undetermined cause of death.
On July 9, 2026, officers working on the trail found 70-year-old Denis Dunnebacke unresponsive. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and died on July 16. As of Backus’s update, the medical examiner had not issued a finding.
Four days after Dunnebacke was found, police located 57-year-old Robert Smith unresponsive and bleeding from his head. He died on July 17. On Sept. 17, the medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide.
Then came the stabbing. On Aug. 20, 2026, 22-year-old Daniel Lusk was found stabbed to death. Police arrested Edward Joseph Smith and charged him with open murder. A court docket shows he was arraigned on Sept. 3.
Ten days after Lusk’s death, on Aug. 30, officers found 57-year-old Louis Woodruff under a bridge with apparent facial injuries. He was hospitalized and died on Sept. 1. Police classified that incident as a homicide.
Four of the five cases appear to involve blunt force trauma and traumatic injuries to the face. No weapon is known in those four. The Lusk case is the outlier, a stabbing that produced a charged suspect.
The chief did not claim a single killer is proven. He did say the department has found trends worth serious attention.
"We look for information. We look for trends. We look for patterns. And we have developed some."
One of those patterns centers on how the victims were positioned when found.
"We believe that our victims in this case were lying down, potentially even sleeping. We don't know that, but based on how we found our victims and their surroundings, it would lead us to believe that this could be a pattern."
That detail matters. Men believed to be unhoused, resting along a public trail at night, are soft targets. A predator who knows that schedule does not need a loud confrontation. He needs cover, timing, and victims who cannot easily fight back.
Lansing police have set up a tip line specifically for River Trail assaults. Backus also said the city lacks the camera coverage these cases demand.
"We don't have a lot of surveillance footage, and that's a hot topic right now. And I do believe more surveillance would help us. More cameras would help us in this scenario."
Public trails without eyes are invitations. Taxpayers fund parks and paths so people can use them safely. When five men turn up dead or dying along the same corridor, the surveillance gap stops being a budget footnote and becomes a public safety failure waiting for a fix.
Edward Joseph Smith sits charged in the Lusk stabbing. That is the only case with an arrest so far. Backus was asked whether Smith could be tied to the other deaths. He refused to force the answer.
"I've mentioned that we have a suspect in custody for one of these incidents. And so, the question that's been posed to us is, is this a suspect for all the incidents?" Backus said. He called it a challenging question and said he has to be cautious.
He went further on the ethics of the work.
"Using a suspect, and then with that name using that to develop or find evidence that meets your theory, that leads you down a road of inappropriate charges, misidentification, some very big problems. So in law enforcement, our responsibility and our ethics demand that we approach this in the right manner."
That is the right standard. Charging a man for crimes the evidence does not support destroys cases and shreds public trust. Victims’ families still deserve a full accounting. So do residents who walk that trail.
ABC News reached out to an attorney listed for Smith on the docket. No response was detailed in the reporting.
As of the Oct. 2 briefing, police had not declared the five deaths the work of one offender. They had not cleared the charged suspect of the other cases either. Medical examiner findings remain incomplete in at least one death, undetermined in another, and ruled homicide in two.
The blunt-force cases still lack a known weapon. The exact bridge where Woodruff was found was not named in the update. Motive was not stated.
What is stated is plain enough. Five men are dead. Four show a similar injury pattern. All five cases are active. Police are openly examining whether the deaths are related. The chief has already told the city he sees patterns, including victims who may have been asleep when they were attacked.
Lansing is the state capital. A string of deaths along a named public trail is not a fringe local blotter item. It is a test of whether city leaders treat open-air violence against vulnerable men as an emergency or as background noise.
Backus asked for information, trends, and tips. He also asked, in effect, for cameras. Law-and-order policing starts with taking patterns seriously, protecting people who sleep outdoors because they have nowhere else to go, and refusing to let a public path become a hunting ground while officials wait for perfect certainty.
Five funerals are already too many. The trail needs answers, and enough light, cameras, and cops that the next man lying down at night does not become the next body.
