Lansing Police Chief can’t rule out serial killer in deaths of several unhoused people along riverfront

Lansing Police Chief Robert Backus said Friday he could not rule out a serial killer after five violent deaths within a mile on the Lansing River Trail in the past year.

“Do we have a serial killer in Lansing,” he asked at a news conference Friday. “We are looking at the idea, or possibility, that these may be related cases. We look for information, we look for patterns and we have developed some. For example, we believe that all of our victims are members of our unhoused community. We suspect that in these instances, the injuries occur overnight, in the early morning hours. We believe that our victims in this case were lying down, potentially even sleeping.”

Lansing Police Chief Robert Backus

There have been five deaths, each linked to an attack, but police are tentatively separating one of the cases, in which someone has been arrested for a fatal stabbing.

The other four have had no arrests and are all linked to some kind of beating, with severe facial injuries.

Police have not identified an obvious weapon or instrument they suspect was used, the chief said.

The victims were all white men, ranging in age from 22, the stabbing victim, to 70 years old. Most survived several days in a hospital before dying; the earliest of the deaths was in 2025, Gino Chouinard, 54, died on Oct. 27, about two weeks after he was injured.

Dennis Dunnebacke, 70, was found with serious facial injuries on July 9 and he died a week later. Backus said medical officials initially described it as a medical cause rather than criminal but he said police treated it as a suspicious case from the onset.

Robert Smith, 57, was found on July 13, he was pronounced dead on July 17.

The stabbing death, of 22-year-old Daniel Lusk, happened on Aug. 20 and a man has been charged with open murder.

The most recent case was a little over a month ago, when Louis Woodruff, 57, was found with severe facial injuries.

The chief said a lack of surveillance cameras along the river has hampered the investigation, with the one case that has an arrest being linked to surveillance images.

Backus said there are no other deaths along the river. He said he is not aware of any severe assaults along the river and investigators have not handled any cases there recently where a non-fatal assault seems similar to the deaths.

He said homeless advocates and police have been working to warn people living along the river, and the advocates have reported that around half of those living there have moved elsewhere.

Backus said he didn’t know where they had gone.

The chief said the attacks are all believed to have happened in early morning hours, around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m.

“I do not have concerns for safety on the river trail outside of those hours,” Backus said.