It took more than a year, but the FBI’s report into the La Crosse river drownings finally arrived at the Tribune on Tuesday.

Excitement quickly turned to disappointment as I made my way through the condensed report full of redactions.

The copy I received looks like Swiss cheese.

Just nine pages of the 31-page report made it the Tribune. Paragraphs and sections were omitted due to title 5, section 552 of the United States Code that protects “personnel and medical files” that would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t qualify my intentions as an “unwarranted invasion.”

Even my own name is unnecessarily omitted from my open records request, the last page in the report.

On Sept. 10, 2007, the Tribune filed an open records request with the FBI for access to its report into the La Crosse river drownings after La Crosse Police Chief Ed Kondracki announced the FBI concluded no foul play or serial offender in the area’s river deaths.

I was strung along by countless letters from the FBI stating my request was “being reviewed by an analyst” until the report’s arrival Tuesday.

The report states that the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime was contacted in late 2006 concerning the deaths of eight young men in La Crosse area rivers between July 12, 1997, and Sept. 30, 2006. Each case involved a man who drowned after drinking.

The NCAVC was asked to review each death investigation “in an effort to determine whether commonalities existed which could imply that a serial offender was active in La Crosse.” NCAVC was also asked to determine whether additional investigation should be done into any of the deaths.

The report provides a short summary of the circumstances of the deaths of all eight men n Richard Hlavary, Charles Blatz, Anthony Skifton, Nathan Kapfer, Jeffrey Geesey, Patrick Runigen, Jared Dion and Lucas Homan n including their age, date of death, where they were last seen and how their body was discovered.

Notes from the victim’s autopsies also are redacted from the report.

In each case, NCAVC concludes that unless someone comes forward with additional information, no further investigation is necessary. The Homan case is excluded from the conclusion because it was still under investigation when the report was prepared.

NCAVC concluded there is no evidence to support a serial killer is praying on young drunken men, based, in part, on the lack of forensic evidence, trauma and suspicious circumstances.

“None of the cases have been linked forensically, and there is no singular or unusual behavior reflected in the cases that would support their linkage to a common offender,” the report stated. “The lack of trauma … known altercations, or being hit by a boat, is extremely unusual in homicide investigations, let alone in serial killing investigations.”

The agency also reviewed reports from eight people who fell into rivers and survived. None reported being contacted by someone before falling in or being forced in the water. All eight had been drinking.

For you conspiracy theorists, pay attention: NCAVC acknowledges that based on the victim’s high level of drunkenness, chilly temperatures and treacherous waters where they died “it is not usual that many of the victims died of accidental drowning with alcohol intoxication as a contributing factor.”

Disagree? I’d give you the phone number to contact the author of the report, but that too was redacted.