This month marks 41 years since David Gionet disappeared after leaving a party in Grand Traverse County.
Michigan State Police reopened the case in November 2022, but it remains unsolved.
“They went down to the bar, hung out there for a while, and then towards the end of the night, they ended up returning back to that friend’s house on Green Lake Peninsula,” troopers said.
That walk back up the peninsula would be one of the last times anyone would report seeing Gionet alive.
“But Dave was kind of the last friend that was hanging out there. He was talking to his friend that lived at that house and was talking about getting home sooner so he could make it to school that morning and was discussing kind of walking across Green Lake. That friend walked with him to the edge of the lake just to show him that ice wasn’t safe,” state police said.
With that, David headed south, down the Green Lake Peninsula.
“And that was the last time that he was seen in the days following. None of his friends had really heard from him. And so on the 7th, four days later, he was finally reported missing,” said state police.
The Coast Guard and local dive teams did multiple searches on Green Lake, given one of David’s last reported conversations.
But those searches turned up nothing, and dives on the lake in the years since also came up empty, all but eliminating the possibility that David tried walking across Green Lake.
“March was like unseasonably warm that year. And so there wasn’t even really ice on the lake at all at that time. And then follow-up interviews also showed that Dave was like deathly afraid of the ice and that typically would never walk across the lake like that,” explained state police.
That left detectives to chase down other leads.
There were rumors David may have left the area on his own, but there’s no evidence to back that up, and all of David’s belongings were left at the cabin where he was staying.
There was also a tip his body may have been found in Florida, but that never panned out.
Detectives chose to reopen the case in November 2022.
“And we did get people that called in with further information. But it just it all was rumors. I mean, there’s nothing that could be confirmed. There’s nothing that we were able to solidify as being a legitimate lead,” troopers said.
That’s left David’s family and detectives remain without any answers.
“I think we wait for somebody to hopefully have a conscience and they come forward with some sort of information that they might have that can lead us in the right direction so that we can give Dave’s family some peace and some answers. And that Dave also gets that peace,” state police said.
