Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist friends and neighbors. Tonight's classic episode may
Speaker 1: not be appropriate for all listeners. The headline simply put,
Speaker 1: could a group of serial murderers be kidnapping and drowning
Speaker 1: young men across the entirety of the United States?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I remembering like pools were involved in this one.
Speaker 2: Bodies of water, for sure, went the pools. There weren't pools.
Speaker 3: I think it's more lakes rivers.
Speaker 2: Okay, I just remember I remember a graffiti situation, like
Speaker 2: where they were tagging this smiley face and from my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm picturing one in like a drained pool that I
Speaker 2: could be maybe it was like a canal or something.
Speaker 2: I think it was a canal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we kept talking about this specific episode while we
Speaker 3: were making that one.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. There are parallels. And this is
Speaker 2: not to be confused with The Happy Face Killer, a
Speaker 2: series that both Ben and I worked on, which is
Speaker 2: also good and now a TV show weirdly on Lincoln
Speaker 2: Peacock or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is instead, and I appreciate that point because
Speaker 1: it's easy to confuse the two. This is the Smiley
Speaker 1: Face Murder conspiracy. The idea that these what appear to
Speaker 1: be accidental drownings do perhaps to implement weather, simple bad luck,
Speaker 1: or perhaps intoxication, or instead the result of an active
Speaker 1: group of straight up maniacs. And for the people who
Speaker 1: believe in this theory, retired detectives among them. The giveaway
Speaker 1: is that there is always some kind of trademark graffiti
Speaker 1: of a smiley face. And I don't know, man, this
Speaker 1: is deep stuff.
Speaker 2: And guys, I'm having a hard time remembering how this
Speaker 2: one results. I feel like there was a twist we'll
Speaker 2: find out shortly. Here we go.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 2: You to know.
Speaker 4: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 2: Name is Noman. They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Speaker 1: Mission control decands, most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start out with something very very honest,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the great commonalities.
Speaker 2: Of our species is this.
Speaker 1: People die, whether due to accident, injury, disease, or crime.
Speaker 1: The unexpected loss of a loved one is one of
Speaker 1: the most harrowing events in human experience. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: who you are, prince, a popper. We love people, and
Speaker 1: at some point they or we are gone. And when
Speaker 1: people are struggling in the wake of these these terrible,
Speaker 1: indescribable tragedies, we often find ourselves desperately searching for answers.
Speaker 1: You know, questions haunt us. Was there something I could
Speaker 1: have done differently? We might ask, Or out of all
Speaker 1: of the billions of people in the world, why was
Speaker 1: my child, my partner, my parent, or my friend the
Speaker 1: one to pass away? And this intense pain worsens when
Speaker 1: survivors are left with missing pieces to their stories. You know,
Speaker 1: we always hear about We always hear about legal proceedings
Speaker 1: maybe for a disappearance or a crime or murder, that
Speaker 1: go on for years or decades after the event. And
Speaker 1: in many ways it's driven by surviving family members or
Speaker 1: loved ones, not because they believe this will somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: bring someone back. It's because the experience of closure is
Speaker 1: so much better than the experience of wondering what happened
Speaker 1: to a child, or a spouse or a loved one.
Speaker 1: But then there's this other chilling situation, which is, what
Speaker 1: do you do when authorities have ruled the death of
Speaker 1: a loved one accidental, but you feel they got it wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen examples of that, and we know
Speaker 1: at least we can't speak for every country, but we
Speaker 1: know that here in the US there is a clear
Speaker 1: and systemic problem with things being with causes of death
Speaker 1: being misidentified right or with some kind of malfunction in
Speaker 1: the justice system leading to the wrong person being convicted
Speaker 1: of a crime. The real criminal walks away and they
Speaker 1: get caught, you know, four assaults, five murders later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, we also know there are real problems within
Speaker 3: institutions where sometimes in This is certainly not true of
Speaker 3: all cases, and this is certainly not speaking ill of
Speaker 3: any individual out there who may be listening or who
Speaker 3: is working in any of these fields. But sometimes it
Speaker 3: is more beneficial to have a let's say, a case
Speaker 3: be classified one way rather than the other. That will
Speaker 3: prevent a major investigation from occurring, because.
Speaker 2: As far as the authorities are concerned, that closes the
Speaker 2: book on it. They can devote resources elsewhere and we
Speaker 2: all know that law enforcement agencies are often quite strapped
Speaker 2: for resources, and every agency is every agent.
Speaker 3: We all human beings out here are trying to do
Speaker 3: the best we can with what we have, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that speaks to most of us, especially you listening,
Speaker 3: because you're awesome, who are Yeah? Well, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: just the nature of large systems like that. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: have to you have to at least attempt to make
Speaker 3: it function at its highest level. And to do that,
Speaker 3: you have to pick and choose, basically what priorities.
Speaker 2: And by its very nature, I'm not saying it's inherently callous,
Speaker 2: but it has to take a little bit more of
Speaker 2: a clinical approach to these things then would be taken
Speaker 2: on the family side, which is obviously a much more
Speaker 2: personal and emotional approach to this idea of closure. So
Speaker 2: while the book might be closed on a case as
Speaker 2: far as law enforcement is concerned, that would be far
Speaker 2: from the case if a family member thinks they got
Speaker 2: something a little off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And all of this doesn't change the way those
Speaker 3: family members or those loved ones feel in what they believe.
Speaker 3: None of this, none of the realities change the way
Speaker 3: that experience at that level.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We can all think of specific cases where the where
Speaker 1: in law enforcement, municipal, maybe even on federal level, said Okay,
Speaker 1: we've figured out what happened is what happened, and the
Speaker 1: family says, no, this is not a satisfactory explanation. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, in the past, we've covered many
Speaker 1: examples of this, often with journalists who found something they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know and then later somehow died
Speaker 1: and before we go on. You know, this reminds me.
Speaker 1: I recently rewatched some clips of one of your favorite shows, Matt,
Speaker 1: The Wire.
Speaker 2: I believe it is. That is everybody's favorite show, right.
Speaker 1: One of the best shows. Then right, backstory, Matt introduced
Speaker 1: me to The Wire.
Speaker 3: So we would not have Luther if we didn't have
Speaker 3: The Wire. Okay, that's also true, that's all.
Speaker 2: That's all. We also wouldn't have Macavity in the latest
Speaker 2: iteration of Cats, which is a thing of monstrosity and beauty,
Speaker 2: and then everyone should experience it for themselves, just putting
Speaker 2: that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw it too, it and I think it
Speaker 1: is the true spiritual successor to the Wire.
Speaker 2: It's basically the last season of The Wire. Stringer Bell
Speaker 2: pirouetting around in a weird anthropomorphic CGI cat suit with
Speaker 2: ripped abs yep, yep.
Speaker 1: In the before the Cat season of The Wire, you
Speaker 1: guys will recall there was a there was an ongoing
Speaker 1: plot and I think maybe season four.
Speaker 2: Slight spoiler alert, you mean with the vacance where there
Speaker 2: were bodies that were just kind of disappearing, and I
Speaker 2: think they're the newspaper essentially created a narrative of their
Speaker 2: own to explain this.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, full spoiler alert. Now McNulty is.
Speaker 5: Involved using bodies, yeah, yeah, yeah, and is creating essentially
Speaker 5: or or working with this narrative, right, the idea of
Speaker 5: creating a sort of false narrative to get some more
Speaker 5: resources put into solving some of these murders right right.
Speaker 1: Right now that I think about it, I believe was
Speaker 1: season five, McNulty, one of the main characters full spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: creates a serial killer essentially and does this by working
Speaker 1: with the press, and he's they're getting there, They're essentially
Speaker 1: getting more funding through doing this. And one thing that
Speaker 1: I think struck a lot of people about that about
Speaker 1: that move was that The Wire had always been praised
Speaker 1: for its realism and so for something like that to
Speaker 1: occur in a very grounded show. The implication is that
Speaker 1: this happens, you know what I mean. Now, of course
Speaker 1: critics didn't universally love that plot line, but it shows
Speaker 1: us how common this debate is, this idea that there
Speaker 1: might be some greater pattern to the tragedy that surrounds us.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts. Unfortunately, there are no shortages of
Speaker 1: real life cases, not on the wire, real life cases
Speaker 1: where in parents or partners of a deceased individual are
Speaker 1: certain that authorities, through either incompetence, indifference, or even corruption,
Speaker 1: have misidentified a cause of death, essentially that they've ruled
Speaker 1: a homicide and accident. And over recent decades in the US,
Speaker 1: we've seen hundreds of these stories. One that's still with
Speaker 1: me that I've been doing some outside research on is
Speaker 1: the Kendrick Johnson case in Valdosta, Georgia. That's the basketball player,
Speaker 1: the high school kid who was who was found dead,
Speaker 1: rolled up in the rolled up in a Jim Matt
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and his parents say that, you know, bullies
Speaker 1: killed or accidentally killed him, and the authorities argue otherwise,
Speaker 1: They say he accidentally killed himself.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Story for another day, maybe maybe we'll do a whole
Speaker 1: podcast series on it one day. But this might surprise
Speaker 1: some of us in the audience. Also, over the recent decades,
Speaker 1: we've seen one surprising source of controversy for these debates
Speaker 1: over accident versus homicide, and it comes in the case
Speaker 1: of drowning, which is an unpleasant way to.
Speaker 2: Go, of course, it really is.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's surprising that, you know, when
Speaker 1: you would think of accidental death versus homicide, you would
Speaker 1: think of things like maybe firearm related deaths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Well that's not the case. In this country.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of fairly large bodies of water
Speaker 3: and smaller ones too.
Speaker 2: They're everywhere water, it's everywhere, raging rivers, you know.
Speaker 3: They they are, and people every year die, whether accidentally
Speaker 3: or not accidentally, in these bodies of water, and to
Speaker 3: a lot of people. According to the CDC, from two
Speaker 3: thousand and five to twenty fourteen, there were an average
Speaker 3: of three thousand, five hundred and thirty six fatal unintentional drownings.
Speaker 2: And those were not related to boating.
Speaker 3: No, no, so not like drinking and boating and that
Speaker 3: kind of thing, and that that occurs annually within the
Speaker 3: United States. So every year. That is that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 3: It translates to about ten deaths a day.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I just have to say, I grew up near Lake Lanier,
Speaker 3: which is a fairly large man made lake here in Georgia,
Speaker 3: and it is it would be surprising, maybe it would
Speaker 3: be surprising to you, certainly surprising to me the number
Speaker 3: of people who would accidentally drown in.
Speaker 2: That lake every year, for sure.
Speaker 3: And I was unaware of it as a kid, but
Speaker 3: now when I see statistics about it, it's just it
Speaker 3: blows my mind. And to be fair, a lot of
Speaker 3: those do they end up having to do with drinking
Speaker 3: and swimming, or drinking and boating, something like that. And
Speaker 3: today's case that we're going to get into a little
Speaker 3: later also involves perhaps drinking, perhaps drug use, and being
Speaker 3: in a body of water.
Speaker 1: I have a very tangentially related, perhaps fun fact.
Speaker 3: For okay, I'll take some fun right now, which.
Speaker 1: You probably already know and you probably already know. No,
Speaker 1: it's this Georgia has no natural lakes. They're all man made.
Speaker 1: Oh so that's that's a little palate cleanser we do.
Speaker 2: I'm okay with that. Yeah, yeah. The ingenuity of mankind
Speaker 2: you know, on full display here in Georgia. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: we do have some swamps, that's right, we do have
Speaker 2: some some swamps.
Speaker 1: Not the best for swimming though, no, no, just for shwimmers.
Speaker 2: Ross David Swimmer, is that the one he notoriously loves
Speaker 2: a good swamp.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, swamp Ross used to was his name in
Speaker 1: the pilot. They changed his character a little bit, but okay,
Speaker 1: so that palate cleanser just helps us get further into
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole here. Because of those drowning deaths. When
Speaker 1: we look at drowning deaths, an additional three hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty two people died each year in deaths that were
Speaker 1: the linear esque ones voting related. Of the people who
Speaker 1: die about one from drowning, about one in five are
Speaker 1: children fourteen or younger. And that sadly makes brutal sense,
Speaker 1: which is.
Speaker 2: Why life fests are the law, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: kids under a certain age are required to wear life.
Speaker 1: Fests and lifeguards, even in kiddie pools.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 3: And here's something that was surprising to me. Eighty percent
Speaker 3: of drowning victims, according to the CDC, are male. That
Speaker 3: doesn't make sense to me, but let's continue on down here.
Speaker 3: Because almost fifty percent of drownings can be attributed in
Speaker 3: some way or to some extent, to intoxication of some
Speaker 3: kind or another.
Speaker 2: How do you differentiate between a purposeful drowning and an
Speaker 2: accidental drowning?
Speaker 1: Ah, there there's the rub. It turns out that proving
Speaker 1: a drowning was purposeful intentional a homicide. Proving that is
Speaker 1: very very difficult. A lot of evidence can be washed away.
Speaker 1: And because drowning is tragically common, and because fifty percent
Speaker 1: of drownings in this country can be attributed to some
Speaker 1: sort of inebriation, law enforcement is often it's easy to
Speaker 1: assume it was an accident because the odds against it
Speaker 1: being a homicide statistically or very high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, short of there being like a cinder block tied
Speaker 2: to someone's leg or the like, or maybe you know,
Speaker 2: choking marks around a neck or something like that, or
Speaker 2: some sign of trauma that someone was thrown or held
Speaker 2: down or whatever, it could very easily be ruled an
Speaker 2: accidental death. And again that benefits. Again, we're not saying
Speaker 2: they're doing it on purpose of being lazy, but that
Speaker 2: absolutely is probably a desired outcome for law enforcement to
Speaker 2: say Okay, close the book on that. Let's move on
Speaker 2: to the million other cases that we have.
Speaker 3: I'm just jumping through here, and I know we're going
Speaker 3: to hit on this, but the concept of your thinking
Speaker 3: in your mind of, Okay, we found a drowning victim,
Speaker 3: but there is blunt force trauma, Like there's evidence of
Speaker 3: blunt force trauma to.
Speaker 2: The head or something.
Speaker 3: Sure, how how can you fully rule out that that
Speaker 3: didn't occur or when a fall happened or you know
Speaker 3: there it just becomes it becomes a labyrinth of you
Speaker 3: have to basically work to say this was a homicide.
Speaker 1: Rather you yeah, the order of conclusions or operations, the
Speaker 1: sort of the decision tree yeah does have when it
Speaker 1: comes to drowning. Uh, the best way to say it
Speaker 1: is that medical examiners have to rule out every other
Speaker 1: possible explanation as to why someone ended up dead in
Speaker 1: the water. And they have to think of, you know,
Speaker 1: drug overdoses, right, maybe maybe a heart attack, maybe a
Speaker 1: slip and fall and that caused blunt injury to their
Speaker 1: head and they were unconscious and couldn't get out of
Speaker 1: the water, And only after saying it was definitely none
Speaker 1: of those things, are they able to say maybe it
Speaker 1: was murder.
Speaker 2: Not to mention the fact that unless a body is
Speaker 2: weighted down, which would be clear indication of foul play,
Speaker 2: it's gonna drift some distance, so it's harder to tie
Speaker 2: it to the location where the fall maybe actually happen,
Speaker 2: or say, oh, this is definitely where they hit their head, etc.
Speaker 2: So it really is kind of a perfect storm of
Speaker 2: being able to declare it an.
Speaker 3: Accident, yeah, depending in which body of water they are recovered.
Speaker 1: And then it gets more complicated because all of that
Speaker 1: if all of those things somehow happen and a medical
Speaker 1: examiner is able to say this indicates that it could
Speaker 1: only be a murder if that very rare set of
Speaker 1: circumstances occurs, then the next step is to prosecute or find,
Speaker 1: you know, someone who would have done this, And like
Speaker 1: a lot of violent crime, in homicide murders that we
Speaker 1: know of and that are proven, the criminal is usually
Speaker 1: someone familiar with the victim.
Speaker 2: It's not just a random right.
Speaker 1: But prosecutors have to prove that. They have to prove
Speaker 1: a drowning was intentional, which means they have to build
Speaker 1: a case on circumstantial evidence. They have to be able
Speaker 1: not just to say, okay, the flow of the river
Speaker 1: is this, or we know that the lake works this way.
Speaker 1: They have to also say, you know these people were fighting,
Speaker 1: Tammy and Tamara or whatever were angry at each other outive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have to do motive exactly where there was money,
Speaker 1: There were money issues, there was an insurance policy that
Speaker 1: just got taken out forty eight hours before, there was
Speaker 1: trouble with the law. And because of all of these factors,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to know how many homicides involving drowning
Speaker 1: actually exist, and there's not much research on it. Local
Speaker 1: police statistics, of course, are not always as well documented
Speaker 1: as people would hope. Like consider this, Matt, you give
Speaker 1: us the statistics of drowning. Overall proving cases of drowning.
Speaker 1: According to the FBI in twenty seventeen, we just pull
Speaker 1: one year from their uniform crime report, there were only
Speaker 1: eight homicides by drowning. And that's out of what more
Speaker 1: than three and a half thousand, thirty five hundred per year,
Speaker 1: So they were out of those that were only able
Speaker 1: to prove that eight were homicides. And this bothers people
Speaker 1: in multiple aspects of law enforcement.
Speaker 3: There's a diver that's less than an average number of
Speaker 3: drownings that occur per day.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a great way to
Speaker 1: look at it. So according to people like a diver
Speaker 1: named Andrea Zaferis, who began assisting homicide investigators with cases
Speaker 1: involving drowning way back in nineteen ninety eight, this diver says,
Speaker 1: we're absolutely missing more than we're catching in homicide drowning cases.
Speaker 1: A vast majority of drownings are accidental, but many which
Speaker 1: can be the result of foul foul play, are overlooked.
Speaker 1: So they're saying they're not They're saying, look, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that everybody who drowned was murdered, but I'm saying
Speaker 1: we are missing stuff, and behind the scenes, everybody knows it.
Speaker 1: Because also a lot of a lot of professionals like
Speaker 1: that it's their career to investigate this stuff don't receive
Speaker 1: the training they need.
Speaker 2: But what if a killer knew that too, Like knew
Speaker 2: those stats and knew how easily these things can go
Speaker 2: under the radar and be ruled an accident. Because if
Speaker 2: you ask me, drowning someone wouldn't necessarily be the first
Speaker 2: way you might choose to kill somebody. It's a little tenuous, right, Like,
Speaker 2: unless certain things are in place, how are you going
Speaker 2: to know if the person actually died or not. It's
Speaker 2: an interesting question. But what if someone did know and
Speaker 2: was able to kind of fit this into their plan? Right?
Speaker 1: What if some of these accidental drownings are in fact murders,
Speaker 1: And furthermore, what if these murders are related.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that right after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. We are entering the realm
Speaker 1: of what is commonly called the smiley face murder theory,
Speaker 1: the smiley face murders, the smiley face killer, or slight
Speaker 1: spoiler alert here killers.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This theory argues that more than forty cases I think
Speaker 1: forty five or so of fatal drownings between nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven and at least two thousand and eight were mistakenly
Speaker 1: labeled accidental when they were in fact homicides.
Speaker 3: And that number, by the way, as we go through
Speaker 3: this has the number of suspected cases of fatal drowning
Speaker 3: related to this case hasn't necessarily grown, but the possible
Speaker 3: cases identified by some of these guys has risen up
Speaker 3: into the three hundred something range.
Speaker 1: Right in this that number comes often from people who
Speaker 1: later came to the theory and started finding what they
Speaker 1: felt were commonalities.
Speaker 3: And some of the original investigators.
Speaker 1: And some of the original investigators, So here's the gist.
Speaker 1: These cases of fatal drownings involved young men, college age
Speaker 1: dudes who were found dead in bodies of water across
Speaker 1: several different Midwestern states in the US over the last decade,
Speaker 1: and the investigators eventually started using the term serial killer,
Speaker 1: which a lot of professionals hate because it feels a
Speaker 1: little alarmist and hyperbolic. But why smiley face? Did they
Speaker 1: just pick that one? We all know what as smiley faces.
Speaker 1: We don't have to overthink that. It's like, we all
Speaker 1: know what drowning is. Smiley face, two dots, bottom half
Speaker 1: of a circle.
Speaker 2: Oh, it looks like a face. Well, in this case,
Speaker 2: the idea of the smiley face because and connected to
Speaker 2: this alleged string of murders cluster of murders. When it
Speaker 2: was announced publicly that police had discovered graffiti depicting that
Speaker 2: ubiquitous two dots and half a circle smiley face near
Speaker 2: the locations where they believe the killer or potentially killers
Speaker 2: dumped bodies in at least a dozen of these cases. Also,
Speaker 2: a phrase sinsinewa was also cited as being found near
Speaker 2: some of these areas that were being investigated in connection
Speaker 2: with bodies found floating in water.
Speaker 3: I would like to point out here that the smiley faces, again,
Speaker 3: it's only in thirteen of these identified forty something cases,
Speaker 3: but it changes a lot. You can go online and
Speaker 3: see pictures of several of the alleged smiley face connected
Speaker 3: graffiti's and they really like one of them looks like
Speaker 3: a little version of a devil or demon. They're in
Speaker 3: varying colors, varying sizes and styles. It's interesting that it's
Speaker 3: not a single symbol. You know, if that was going
Speaker 3: to be just a serial killer, you'd think that it
Speaker 3: would just be a symbol. But perhaps as we get
Speaker 3: through here, it'll make more sense of why it would change, right.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in a few minutes as well,
Speaker 1: the differing interpretations of what a smiley face might be
Speaker 1: or what the import of it is. Let's look let's
Speaker 1: step back, let's look at the proponents, the creators of
Speaker 1: this theory. To do so, we journeyed to New York
Speaker 1: where we meet New York Police Department detectives Kevin Gannon
Speaker 1: and Anthony d'Arte now retired, now retire, both retired and
Speaker 1: private investigators. In two thousand and eight, they announced that
Speaker 1: they believed one Patrick McNeil, a twenty four year old
Speaker 1: accounting major at the time of his death, did not
Speaker 1: drown accidentally. But Okay, what happened to McNeil at the time,
Speaker 1: by the way, Gannon was, Gannon was a working detective.
Speaker 1: He wasn't retired yet.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: So McNeil was hanging out in the East Side, the
Speaker 3: Upper east Side of New York City. He was having
Speaker 3: a night of it. He was drinking. It was February sixteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven. He's at this place called the Dapper
Speaker 3: Dog that's on East ninety second Street there in New
Speaker 3: York City, and he's hanging out, he's doing his thing,
Speaker 3: he's having a night of it. He disappears, and then
Speaker 3: later on April seventh, nineteen ninety seven, his body is discovered.
Speaker 3: He's discovered near the sixty ninth Street pier in Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: He is floating in the water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Gannon at the time is specifically working and
Speaker 1: missing persons and he catches the case.
Speaker 2: It's in the East River, by the way, the.
Speaker 1: Case is ruled unintentionalental and this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that, you know, it's weird. A lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of people in law enforcement or in related jobs
Speaker 1: tend to get a case or certain cases that that
Speaker 1: stay with them, that haunt them, you know, And this
Speaker 1: was it for Gannon. He did not agree with the
Speaker 1: official findings, and he spoke with the parents of McNeil
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, job aside, I am
Speaker 1: not giving up this investigation until I find the real
Speaker 1: story of what happened to your son. And this stays
Speaker 1: with him throughout his career. When he retires, he enlists
Speaker 1: Anthony d'Arte, who is his old partner, and he says,
Speaker 1: let's let's do this full time. It's similar to in
Speaker 1: a way of want to do another fictional comparison, it's
Speaker 1: similar to Marty and rust Coal in True Detective season one,
Speaker 1: right when this doesn't really spoil a story, but there's
Speaker 1: a segment where neither of them are working for law enforcement,
Speaker 1: but there's a case they can't let go and they
Speaker 1: become they're working as pis essentially that's what these guys
Speaker 1: do in real life, and Gannon mortgages his house, spends
Speaker 1: his savings researching this, chasing these cases, and they start
Speaker 1: linking McNeil's death to other cases that they feel have
Speaker 1: disturbing things in common, because it turns out that McNeil
Speaker 1: is not the only person in this part of the
Speaker 1: world who went out for a night partying with their
Speaker 1: friends and was later found dead in the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's jump right back quickly, just to talk about
Speaker 3: how McNeil is a college senior. He is, like a
Speaker 3: lot of the people were going to talk about, he's
Speaker 3: pretty athletic. He's kind of at the top of his game, right,
Speaker 3: He's a young white male, And that is one of
Speaker 3: the things that ends up linking a lot of these
Speaker 3: cases together, just one of the top level things. So
Speaker 3: they noticed that McNeil's death was similar to that of
Speaker 3: a gentleman named Lawrence Andrews. This guy was twenty two
Speaker 3: years old. He was New Year's Eve in two thousand
Speaker 3: and six. He was drinking near Grand Central Terminal and
Speaker 3: he vanished, and then later his body was discovered on
Speaker 3: February twelfth, two thousand and seven, also off the sixty
Speaker 3: ninth Street Pier, close to where McNeil was.
Speaker 2: Found, and Gannon.
Speaker 1: Says that he and his partner studied the water flow
Speaker 1: of the area and the contours of the land, and
Speaker 1: he said, look, the similarities between these two cases cannot
Speaker 1: just be accident. He believed that in both cases, is
Speaker 1: the victims were drugged with GHB.
Speaker 2: Was the dayreak drug right right right?
Speaker 1: That makes you know, insensate, unconscious, unable to.
Speaker 2: Fight back or defend yourself. Is it essentially like a
Speaker 2: sedative or is it more like maybe you know, what
Speaker 2: they would call a benzodiazepin, like a xanax or something
Speaker 2: where it kind of makes you black out almost where
Speaker 2: you don't remember what's going on.
Speaker 1: I do know it affects. It does affect memory, I believe,
Speaker 1: and people have used it as a party drug. But
Speaker 1: I always learned about it as as I always learned
Speaker 1: about it as you know, a drug that creeps give
Speaker 1: to people to sexually assault, and technically I believe it
Speaker 1: is a central nervous system depressant. Anyhow, he says, this
Speaker 1: specific substance has been given to these guys. They were
Speaker 1: drugged and then they were placed in the water after
Speaker 1: some amount of time, which will become very important later.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 1: These two guys learn that four young men had vanished
Speaker 1: in Minnesota and Wisconsin over a forty day period in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, and that they, like McNeil and
Speaker 1: like Lawrence Andrews, had a lot of the similar things
Speaker 1: that you had just described. Mat somebody's out, maybe partying
Speaker 1: with their friends, and then they walk off, perhaps not
Speaker 1: seeming to be in a state of distress, and then
Speaker 1: they disappear. The detectives did something interesting here, and it
Speaker 1: goes to a point you made earlier, nol. They started
Speaker 1: looking not to where the bodies were physically found, but
Speaker 1: to where, according to their best guests, the bodies had
Speaker 1: entered the water right and that's where they found the
Speaker 1: smiley faces. And again, as as established earlier, not they
Speaker 1: didn't find forty five different smiley face icons for every
Speaker 1: you know, every body that was discovered. They only found
Speaker 1: twenty two or twenty something at the time.
Speaker 2: I know we're gonna get there, but I do want
Speaker 2: to say that that is a as we mentioned, a
Speaker 2: pretty ubiquitous, very low key graffiti. Everyone knows how to
Speaker 2: do it. You know, any of your fair weather taggers.
Speaker 2: That would be a pretty easy go to to just
Speaker 2: do a circle, two dots and a half a circle.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the guy who made this smiley face.
Speaker 1: Work of genius. Really, I imagine doing something that important.
Speaker 1: It's three lines.
Speaker 2: It's one of those things too, where it's like such
Speaker 2: a parallel thinking type thing and such a simple thing.
Speaker 2: I don't I almost guarantee there's no one like credited
Speaker 2: with the smiley face. Actually, I think there might be.
Speaker 1: Actually I think there might be, and it may be
Speaker 1: just because of just because that's the person who got
Speaker 1: it on a T shirt that was have a nice day, maybe, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's what I'm thinking of.
Speaker 2: Harvey ross Ball, yep. Interesting fifty years ago in Worcester, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: an American graphic artist. He's credited as creating this. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's right, I did.
Speaker 1: I think I did an episode of Maybe Stuff of
Speaker 1: Genius about that. A lot of people in the US
Speaker 1: learn about that through the film adaptation of Forrest Gump
Speaker 1: when the guy's going on his running streak and then
Speaker 1: he wipes his face.
Speaker 2: With the right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that aside, it is a very very very
Speaker 1: very common. Dare I say ubiquitous icon.
Speaker 2: It's funny not to get a too off talk, but
Speaker 2: you guys know, I worked on a show called Happy
Speaker 2: Face about the Happy Face serial killer, and he was
Speaker 2: given that moniker because he signed his letters to the
Speaker 2: press with that very same icon. And when you google
Speaker 2: Smiley Face Killer, happy Face Killer comes up a lot too,
Speaker 2: so they're often kind of conflated because of the similarities
Speaker 2: in the in the monikers.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's that's a very important distinction. These are
Speaker 1: These are, as far as we know, not related, and
Speaker 1: I don't think Gannon or d'artay are arguing that they are.
Speaker 1: But they are arguing that they found copious evidence suggesting
Speaker 1: that McNeil, who again is sort of the genesis the
Speaker 1: origin point for this theory, that McNeil didn't just walk
Speaker 1: off a few sheets to the wind and then fall
Speaker 1: in a river and drown. They're saying that someone intoxicated him,
Speaker 1: they drugged him. There was a car seen following him
Speaker 1: after he left the bar, the Dapper Dog. They're also
Speaker 1: saying he had ligature marks on his neck, charring on
Speaker 1: his head and torso, and that the way his body
Speaker 1: was positioned was inconsistent with normal drowning. So someone tortured him,
Speaker 1: drugged him, tortured him and then placed him in the water.
Speaker 1: They said he had been stalked, drugged, abducted, bound burned,
Speaker 1: and then killed and then dumped in the water.
Speaker 3: Well, and it you know, the one major thing that
Speaker 3: makes sense there is that he was missing for a month,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's he dropped off the map, he
Speaker 3: was somewhere, and then forty days later he was found dead.
Speaker 3: And he you know, he doesn't seem like he was
Speaker 3: sitting in the water for forty.
Speaker 2: Days exactly, right.
Speaker 1: It seems like he had been in the water for
Speaker 1: a relatively short amount of time, right, And we see
Speaker 1: that that's another commonality they look for in some of
Speaker 1: these cases is the the the amount of time, the
Speaker 1: gap between when a victim was last seen and when
Speaker 1: their body was discovered. And in some cases that's that's
Speaker 1: quite a stretch, you know. They said that McNeil was
Speaker 1: murdered by what they called this Miley Face gang. See,
Speaker 1: because they don't believe it's just one person. They believe
Speaker 1: there is a group doing this. That's the only way
Speaker 1: they think you can explain the regional distribution of the
Speaker 1: murders twenty five cities across eleven states since nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: maybe even continuing today according to them, and we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about the commonalities they use to link
Speaker 1: these cases, But what are they other than the method
Speaker 1: of murder, which would be drugging and drowning.
Speaker 3: One of the big things they noticed is that these
Speaker 3: guys were very similar with regards to their demographics. These
Speaker 3: are young men, a lot of them college age, who
Speaker 3: disappeared after a night of drinking, specifically going out and drinking,
Speaker 3: and they did end up dying. They also noticed that
Speaker 3: these guys are athletic, a lot of them, at least
Speaker 3: the majority of these cases.
Speaker 2: Were young white men who were athletic, and this purported
Speaker 2: symbol of what you could call, I guess, a gang
Speaker 2: or a cell of potential killers. The smiley faces were
Speaker 2: drawn on walls around just twenty two of the crime
Speaker 2: scenes in five different states, including Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: and Ohio. We also have the size and shape of
Speaker 2: the smiley faces varying, and the paint used also varying.
Speaker 2: Some of the faces, for example, might have had horns,
Speaker 2: which is a popular variation on that like you can
Speaker 2: think of like an emoji like the kind of wicked
Speaker 2: and having, you know, like sort of dastardly fun, mischievous
Speaker 2: emoji smiley that has sort of like a smirk in
Speaker 2: the horns. I think we of hot topic in Gatzu.
Speaker 2: Totally cool. Yeah. I actually remember when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan, and there was a Smashing
Speaker 2: Pumpkins T shirt for that Melancholy the Infinite Sadness album
Speaker 2: and it said the world is a vampire and it
Speaker 2: had a kind of iconic smiley vampire with fangs and
Speaker 2: little horns drawn in this exact same style. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And Gannon, the investigator there, even he has a quote
Speaker 3: I think we mentioned this, but he calls it an evil,
Speaker 3: happy smiley man.
Speaker 1: Right, And just for a second when you said Gannon,
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the antagonist in Zelda.
Speaker 2: I know me too different Gannon Kevin.
Speaker 1: Gannon turned a new corner and he left High Rule
Speaker 1: and became a p I because he's got a lot,
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of skeletons, and he's a tortured
Speaker 1: anti hero.
Speaker 6: Wait.
Speaker 3: The character, yeah, he's the main bad guy.
Speaker 2: Was from from the beginning of the series.
Speaker 3: From the ones that I played.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, you're talking about like early Nintendo versions or
Speaker 2: like more like recent ones like the Windwalkers. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 2: it was the early.
Speaker 1: Nintendo h but but but our Gannon in this story
Speaker 1: is Gannon with G A ed N O N.
Speaker 2: Spelling, yet ken in front of it and with a
Speaker 2: Kevin in front of it.
Speaker 1: Kevin's the important distinction there, really quick, another little pellet cleanser.
Speaker 2: Did you hear they are? It seems like it's such
Speaker 2: a missed opportunity. They're making a Zelda series. Yep, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's gonna be a stream took long enough, right, doesn't
Speaker 2: it seem like that one is rife?
Speaker 3: There was a Zelda series, right, I.
Speaker 2: Don't think so. There may be a cartoon, but this
Speaker 2: will be live action. Yeah, whoa really? Uh oh shit,
Speaker 2: it's like one of the few video game adaptations that
Speaker 2: actually could be really cool.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do remember watching the legend of Zelda cartoons. Okay,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to make sure I was remembering that correctly.
Speaker 1: Matt, you had mentioned earlier that idea that the idea
Speaker 1: of the differentiation between the icons, and again the idea
Speaker 1: that there's a very common icon but from now, let's
Speaker 1: just let's approach it this way. If this theory is true,
Speaker 1: it is profoundly disturbing. And again, if it's true, there
Speaker 1: are terrifying implications here. First, there's the possibility of multiple
Speaker 1: killers working in concert. The reason that is disturbing is because,
Speaker 1: despite what fiction would have you believe, it is incredibly
Speaker 1: rare for investigators for anyone to find a proven case
Speaker 1: of serial killers operate cooperating. Really, it's the kind of
Speaker 1: mental disfigurement that leads someone to become a serial murderer,
Speaker 1: doesn't really doesn't really predispose them to group work or
Speaker 1: group projects. There are some, of course, there are exceptions there.
Speaker 1: Lake and Ing would be one famous case rough Henry
Speaker 1: Lee Lucas an oddis tool which you may remember from
Speaker 1: our Hand of Death episodes, and he got a recent
Speaker 1: mention under Samuel Little episode. So for that to exist,
Speaker 1: for a group like that to exist, this would be
Speaker 1: one of the first proven cases. The second terrifying implication
Speaker 1: they have a long career, you know.
Speaker 2: What I mean, almost twenty three years, right.
Speaker 1: And that's just that's that we know about, right, that's
Speaker 1: just assuming what Gannon and d'Arte have found is legit.
Speaker 1: The third is, if you think about it, this is
Speaker 1: technically organized crime at that point, because it denotes a
Speaker 1: level of organization that serial killers have not been proven
Speaker 1: to have. Lake and Ing weren't doing this. Lucas and
Speaker 1: Toole certainly were not. In fact, Gannon has described this
Speaker 1: as a a nationwide group that functions in terms of cells,
Speaker 1: similar to a terrorist group. The weird thing about that
Speaker 1: is it is possible for it is possible for people
Speaker 1: to operate in a decentralized way like this just by
Speaker 1: using Internet forums to communicate, similar to the what is
Speaker 1: the thing with old Dutch? The Lake City Quiet pills?
Speaker 2: Yeah, similar to that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very easy to start a group and
Speaker 1: if you're careful with your language, to communicate things from
Speaker 1: point A to point B without ever pinging law enforcement,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, or anyone else, or anyone
Speaker 1: else that you don't want them to know.
Speaker 3: You could do it right under the nose of somebody.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you ever gone to a form and
Speaker 1: found some stuff that seemed like it was a code?
Speaker 2: I don't know. No, Okay, all right, well, I don't
Speaker 2: want to put you in a bad spot there or
Speaker 2: a Facebook group, right, right, right, But let's say it's
Speaker 2: all true.
Speaker 1: If this is all true, then that means those implications
Speaker 1: are necessarily true. It logically follows, and then the next
Speaker 1: question is why aren't the authorities doing more? Well, that's
Speaker 1: because it's a controversial theory and not everyone agrees. And
Speaker 1: what's happening here we'll dive into the problems with the narrative.
Speaker 1: After a word from our sponsors, we're back. So, as
Speaker 1: we've said, there are problems with this narrative. This exploring
Speaker 1: these problems, of course, should in no way be interpreted
Speaker 1: as disrespectful to the families, or the victims or the
Speaker 1: investigators involved. We're just looking at all the different explorations.
Speaker 1: There's a nonprofit group called the Center for Homicide Research,
Speaker 1: and they attempted to scientifically debunk the smiley face murders
Speaker 1: or killers theory. They came up with. They came up
Speaker 1: with a They had a report that you can find
Speaker 1: online that has a laundry list of reasons why they
Speaker 1: think this narrative described by Gannon doesn't hold water. And honestly,
Speaker 1: they they have some good points, like we do not
Speaker 1: have solid evidence that the smiley faces were drawn at
Speaker 1: the same time the bodies were put in the water, right.
Speaker 3: That makes sense. They also know that graffiti exists everywhere,
Speaker 3: especially I mean if you think about a place that
Speaker 3: isn't visited a whole bunch, even if it's down by
Speaker 3: a river or somewhere, you know, you will find graffiti.
Speaker 2: Well, that's where your run of the mill novice tagger
Speaker 2: is going to cut their teeth is out of like
Speaker 2: you know, the public eye, like under a bridge, or
Speaker 2: on a retaining wall like around like the La River
Speaker 2: for example, or any other body of water that's in
Speaker 2: a municipal type area, you know, like up here, like
Speaker 2: in New York City, where several of these cases took place.
Speaker 3: Well, they also make the exact same point that we
Speaker 3: were just talking about, how ubiquitous smiley faces just are
Speaker 3: as a symbol and.
Speaker 2: What a dashed off thing a kid might do. You know,
Speaker 2: I want to be a graffiti artist. You know what's
Speaker 2: the first thing that's going to come to mind. The
Speaker 2: most simple iconographic thing you could do is that circle,
Speaker 2: two dots and a half moon. You know, it's it
Speaker 2: takes very little forethought, the easiest thing in the world
Speaker 2: just to dash off from the top of your head,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it also pretty clearly doesn't seem to be
Speaker 3: a you know, a gang sign because it's not matching, right,
Speaker 3: they're so dissimilar. But they also noticed that that other
Speaker 3: word that we mentioned earlier in Sinewa, since Sinewa, they
Speaker 3: they note that that is a common use of graffiti,
Speaker 3: a common thing to be written, so it appears to
Speaker 3: be also a red herring. They're saying both the smiley
Speaker 3: face and that her.
Speaker 2: Red hearing then made the point that, you know how
Speaker 2: a lot of you'll see single words written on overpass bridges,
Speaker 2: et cetera. That is typically a signature of a particular
Speaker 2: tagger or a graffiti artist. So since Sinewa could be
Speaker 2: one individual who travels around, maybe a train kid or
Speaker 2: something who travels around and just does this tag.
Speaker 1: Or it could or it could be multiple people who
Speaker 1: think that's a cool name, super creepy sounding, right, you know,
Speaker 1: because graft heads and painters they get they take that
Speaker 1: name stuff very seriously, absolutely, you know it. Also, it
Speaker 1: also reminds me of one of my favorite taggers over
Speaker 1: the years in Atlanta. There was for a time a
Speaker 1: guy or girl or person who did the tag goat Ravisher.
Speaker 1: And they didn't do it in a stylistic way. They
Speaker 1: did a really bad job, so bad that you would
Speaker 1: think it's on purpose. They it just looked like they
Speaker 1: have found something, and in shaky block letters, spray painted
Speaker 1: the goat Ravisher, and they were all over little five
Speaker 1: points they had. They had some spots on the bridge
Speaker 1: right outside of our office, and I kept.
Speaker 2: Thinking, man, I love I love this.
Speaker 1: In my head, there's always some weird college doom like
Speaker 1: I love this dude's energy because it was real. It
Speaker 1: was right next to really really nice ornate tags and pieces,
Speaker 1: and this guy would come by and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that probably took them like six hours. Anyway, the goat
Speaker 1: Ravisher strikes again.
Speaker 2: I also, like, you know, I also love the idea
Speaker 2: that this person is clearly romancing the goat. You know,
Speaker 2: it's really like, you know, whining and dining the goat.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it's like greatest of all time.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty good. So it's the greatest of
Speaker 2: all time Ravisher.
Speaker 1: So goat Ravisher. If you're listening, nice work man, miss
Speaker 1: on the streets. Yeah, we see you, we see you.
Speaker 2: But Sinswa is a since Cinewa that's s I N
Speaker 2: s I N I w A is also common graffiti.
Speaker 1: So this nonprofit Center for Homicide Research dismisses that as
Speaker 1: a red herring.
Speaker 2: A lot of people I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who are yeah, it's not common
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta right. A lot of people who are
Speaker 1: proponents of the theory feel like this list is somewhat dismissive.
Speaker 1: But they raise another great point, which is estimating where
Speaker 1: the body might have entered the water. If it's you know,
Speaker 1: X number of yards up or even a mile up
Speaker 1: river from where the body was discovered, it's just that
Speaker 1: it's an estimation. It can be it can be an
Speaker 1: estimation with a high degree of sophistication, but it's still
Speaker 1: it's never going to be a definite, or it's it's
Speaker 1: gonna be rare for it to be a definite. There
Speaker 1: will always be that question. They also disagree with Gannon's
Speaker 1: findings on McNeil. They say there's no evidence of victim
Speaker 1: trauma and the vast majority of recovered remains don't show
Speaker 1: that the victims were recipients of trauma, that they didn't
Speaker 1: have some you know, egregious signs of a beating or something.
Speaker 1: They also point out that homicidal drowning is incredibly rare.
Speaker 1: Again this, this is this, This is a statement you
Speaker 1: could you could pick a bone with. You could have
Speaker 1: a problem with this one, because they're saying that homicidal
Speaker 1: drownings account for two tenths of one percent of all
Speaker 1: US killings point two percent. How that number has to
Speaker 1: be based on the very rare proven cases of homicide
Speaker 1: by drowning, and to be a proven case of homicide
Speaker 1: by drowning, remember that entire checklist of things that investigators
Speaker 1: have to go through first. So odds are I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no question about odds. Are more people have died
Speaker 1: by homicidal drowning than the official numbers would suggest.
Speaker 2: Can we double back really quickly to Gannon's obsession and
Speaker 2: where you think this? What the seeds of this were?
Speaker 2: It was that one particular case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of the family, that's it, right, family, that case.
Speaker 3: I mean think about that, I think just think about that.
Speaker 3: Somebody comes to you and you know you're working, let's say,
Speaker 3: with them for some reason and in some ways working
Speaker 3: for them as a public servant, as a part of
Speaker 3: the NYPD, trying to find their son. It's because it's
Speaker 3: a member. It's a missing person's case for him in
Speaker 3: the beginning, so he's learning everything he possibly can. I'm
Speaker 3: just this is me projecting to Kevin Gannon, but he's
Speaker 3: he's so invested in that family, aid in this person
Speaker 3: that he's trying to locate for days and days and days,
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden shows up dead and drowned.
Speaker 3: And I mean, you can imagine the effect that I
Speaker 3: would have on you if the family is like pleading
Speaker 3: with you to figure out what happened.
Speaker 2: You absolutely can And this is why I could never
Speaker 2: do that job. But does this not seem like a
Speaker 2: classic example of someone getting a little too close to
Speaker 2: what they're investigating. You think he got lost in the case,
Speaker 2: and got lost in the case, and got lost in
Speaker 2: the emotion of it all and needed to build another
Speaker 2: narrative and maybe was looking for things that weren't necessarily there,
Speaker 2: because when you see this list all gathered together like this,
Speaker 2: it really does seem like he was making quite the
Speaker 2: leap of judgment. Well, that's that's the question.
Speaker 3: So there's more I'm gonna say, We're gonna bring up later.
Speaker 3: There's there's one or two major things that make me
Speaker 3: lean a little closer to thinking their something going on.
Speaker 3: But let's continue on this list of why it's probably not,
Speaker 3: at least according.
Speaker 2: To this one.
Speaker 1: Right, well, the idea that water washes away all evidence
Speaker 1: is somewhat of a myth or misleading. They argue that
Speaker 1: the drownings do not fit a serial killer motive. I
Speaker 1: do also want to point out that I this might
Speaker 1: be a hot take, but I don't think Harvey Rossball,
Speaker 1: the inventor of the smiley face, is directly related.
Speaker 2: You know, I think his hands are cleaning this one,
Speaker 2: pretty sure. Yes.
Speaker 1: And then they also have confessions of confessions of people
Speaker 1: who are incarcerated that are saying something was a murder,
Speaker 1: right or saying that saying that they saw something, they
Speaker 1: witness something leading up to one of these disappearances. The
Speaker 1: problem with that is that it's you have to be
Speaker 1: really skeptical when you hear the confessions of inmates. Right
Speaker 1: the again, the Lucas conundrum, right with Henry Lee Lucas
Speaker 1: confessing to hundreds of murders he could not have possibly done,
Speaker 1: not have physically accomplished, in exchange for you know, perks
Speaker 1: in lifeline Bob.
Speaker 3: Even goes back to the same mule little case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, absolutely yeah, which is the whole reason we
Speaker 1: found out about America's most prolific serial killer. So they
Speaker 1: also say that, in their opinion, the general environment of
Speaker 1: the disappearances sound like they're more related to accidental or
Speaker 1: unintentional drownings. They occurred at night, they were in areas
Speaker 1: not far from bars or college towns, and they said that,
Speaker 1: you know, people who have been drinking who stagger away
Speaker 1: from bars are more likely to walk or stagger downhill
Speaker 1: because it's easier. I get that, but that's like, this
Speaker 1: is not an open sandbox game when when you're walking
Speaker 1: home from anywhere, you have a specific direction, and if
Speaker 1: it's uphill, you still have to go uphill. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody is like, ah, my apartments at the top
Speaker 1: of that hill, so I guess I'm going the other way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then they also say that, you know, rivers also
Speaker 1: are downhill, and there are only a few blocks away
Speaker 1: from the bars where these cases occur, and that there's
Speaker 1: there there's a dearth of barriers. There aren't very many
Speaker 1: fences or railings, so intoxicated people who are having tough
Speaker 1: time coordinating their ambulation might just slip and fall.
Speaker 2: That is a really fancy way of saying walking. I
Speaker 2: love it. Well, yeah, I just said walking so many times.
Speaker 2: It's fair. No, it's great, you're a wordsmith.
Speaker 3: It just stinks because they're saying, look, drunk people, when
Speaker 3: they're super super drunk, are just gonna stumble away from
Speaker 3: that bar and maybe fall down the hill land in
Speaker 3: a river because there's no barrier there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, I love that point about it being
Speaker 2: downhill because that's just gravity's gonna like take its course,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: But these people were missing for a period of time
Speaker 3: from a week to who you know, a month, in
Speaker 3: a quarter or something.
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 3: And I take issue with it, but it's okay.
Speaker 2: It feels a little victim blame me, right, Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 2: I see your point there. I see your point there.
Speaker 2: Map I agree.
Speaker 1: And they also say, you know, saying that only males
Speaker 1: are drowning in these cases, does it necessarily mean a
Speaker 1: serial killers evolved, which is true. They also say that
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, particularly the town of Lacrosse, foot patrols and
Speaker 1: police have stopped over fifty plus drunk people walking essentially
Speaker 1: and they've stopped them because they were about to walk
Speaker 1: into the area where the river is late at night
Speaker 1: and there are no barriers that can slip and fall.
Speaker 2: Or into traffic. I mean, you know, who knows. There's
Speaker 2: any number of things. But again, not no victim blaming
Speaker 2: here at all. I do want to point out too
Speaker 2: that I maybe got this a little wrong early on
Speaker 2: when I was leaning on the idea of killing someone
Speaker 2: by drowning them is not really a sure thing, right, Like,
Speaker 2: if you're just pushing someone into a river, like, how
Speaker 2: do you know they're not just gonna swim away or
Speaker 2: you know, get out. But part of this theory is
Speaker 2: the idea that they were drugged and potentially killed in
Speaker 2: advance of being thrown into the river. That's that's part of.
Speaker 3: It, or you know what I mean, Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that point is one of the things that bugs me.
Speaker 2: And so but there's no evidence of that though, right.
Speaker 3: There's some there's some weird stuff going on. We're gonna
Speaker 3: talk there.
Speaker 2: There's some weird stuff. I want to hit this.
Speaker 1: They also report on the actions of law enforcement in
Speaker 1: the same town, saying that they've they've documented the circumstances
Speaker 1: of at least twenty different people who would have drowned
Speaker 1: but have survived. And they said, you know, in every case,
Speaker 1: we tried to figure out what got them to that
Speaker 1: point where they almost drowned. Most of the time these
Speaker 1: would be accidents. Sometimes they were dares because college kids, right,
Speaker 1: we were all we were all there before, or they
Speaker 1: were attempting to commit suicide, or they were again this
Speaker 1: is the most victim blamey thing they were involved in
Speaker 1: aspects of auto assassination.
Speaker 2: This is a first for me on this term, but
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 3: It's it's Darwin's h what is it? The Darwin Award,
Speaker 3: that's what that's what auto assassination is a Darwin Award. Yeah,
Speaker 3: doing something so stupid or like, you know, reckless, that's
Speaker 3: what they're saying.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also just a lifestyle that involves utter disregard
Speaker 2: for one's own longevity or personal well being, your safety, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like you just throw all caution to the wind, and
Speaker 2: you clearly are not looking out for yourself.
Speaker 1: People who weren't searching for a victim blamey euphemism would
Speaker 1: have just said self destructive.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes you know, as the guy who
Speaker 1: just said ambulation a few minutes ago.
Speaker 2: We have to be careful, especially.
Speaker 1: In law enforcement reports or government reports, when you start
Speaker 1: to see the jargon words, you know, when you start
Speaker 1: to hear I don't know, it's like it's the reason
Speaker 1: that sixful cults always go into acronyms. Have you guys
Speaker 1: ever read behind the scenes, like actual leaked scientology documents.
Speaker 1: They're riddled with acronyms. They're like military writing from the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've watched all of George Carlin's specials, and in
Speaker 3: every one of them he's always got a great section
Speaker 3: on euphemisms and how we like whitewash everything.
Speaker 2: Ac Yeah, you're right. It is a clinical way of
Speaker 2: referring to something that potentially is a little darker. Or
Speaker 2: it's a way of maybe normalizing concepts that are a
Speaker 2: little more outlandish or a little more troubling by giving
Speaker 2: them a nice pithy you know, like unsub for example,
Speaker 2: that's the unidentified subject in a murder investigation. When you
Speaker 2: say unsub, it sounds a lot more digestible, maybe, you.
Speaker 1: Know, sure, yeah, or conspiracy theorist. That way, you can
Speaker 1: ignore what kind of drug money in international bank is
Speaker 1: moving whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2: The old thought terminating cliche exactly.
Speaker 1: But these points they also say, as I think we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, that presence of GHB in a victim's body
Speaker 1: does not indicate whether they were maliciously drugged or whether
Speaker 1: they did it themselves. That's true if we're exercising skepticism.
Speaker 1: But they also say, we don't have enough evidence to
Speaker 1: say that they were drugged by offenders prior to their abduction.
Speaker 1: These points have some validity, but let's just let's talk
Speaker 1: about Let's talk about the other side, because there are
Speaker 1: several things here that are incredibly I don't want to
Speaker 1: say they're deal breakers, but they're problematic for anyone who
Speaker 1: thinks that Gannon is completely just reading tea leaves. And
Speaker 1: the first one is the one I keep coming back to,
Speaker 1: is the length of time, Like you said, Matt, the
Speaker 1: length of time between when they were last seen and
Speaker 1: when they were discovered. We didn't have great statistics that
Speaker 1: we could dig up.
Speaker 2: Love to read them. If you are listening, you can
Speaker 2: find them.
Speaker 1: Have great systicks on how long on average it takes
Speaker 1: to find the victim of the corpse of a drowning victim.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, well here's the deal for me. I'm just
Speaker 3: gonna lay it out really quickly. In the Rolling Stones
Speaker 3: article on this subject that I think it came out
Speaker 3: in September.
Speaker 2: Of last year, Yeah, September thirteenth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, it names several victims. In particular, we talked
Speaker 3: about Patrick Neil. If you go to this person William
Speaker 3: Hurley that I don't think we actually mentioned on air here.
Speaker 3: He was a guy who was hanging out of Boston
Speaker 3: Bruins game in two thousand and nine October two thousand
Speaker 3: and nine, and his cell phone battery was really low.
Speaker 3: He's he calls his girlfriend drunkenly, he's very intoxicated and says, hey,
Speaker 3: come pick me up. She goes out to meet him
Speaker 3: and he's gone. He's not there. She can't get in
Speaker 3: touch with him. Six days later, his body's found in
Speaker 3: the Charles River and his cell phone is smashed nearby.
Speaker 3: They recover that, like, okay, So that's one right, that's
Speaker 3: one instance. Here we talked about McNeil.
Speaker 1: Dakota James, Yes, Dakota James. So Dakota James is interesting
Speaker 1: in that if we link him to the Smiley face theory.
Speaker 1: He's a case where something almost went wrong, where something
Speaker 1: did go wrong for the criminals, because on December fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, he called his friend Shelley. He said he
Speaker 1: was terrified. He was wandering around Pittsburgh. He was cold,
Speaker 1: he was he didn't know where he was. He asked
Speaker 1: that he couldn't remember what happened. He just sort of
Speaker 1: came to and he was walking around the area and
Speaker 1: the police wouldn't help him. So his friend freaks out.
Speaker 1: Did he get mugged? Was he in an accident?
Speaker 2: Where are you? I'll come find you.
Speaker 1: And then she actually does find him, and he's not
Speaker 1: where he said he would be. She was able to
Speaker 1: use her phone to find him, and then when she
Speaker 1: got there, she saw a dark suv in the wrong lane,
Speaker 1: facing the wrong direction. He was walking out of the hotel,
Speaker 1: headed toward the suv and she caught him. She yelled
Speaker 1: at him, hey, I'm over here, and he goes to
Speaker 1: his car. He goes to her car, got in with
Speaker 1: her and left. He didn't seem drunk, didn't seem drugged.
Speaker 1: He was emotional, but he wasn't, you know, wet, dirty,
Speaker 1: hadn't been beaten. He said, he just became aware he
Speaker 1: was walking on the street, had no idea where he
Speaker 1: was or how he got there. And the last thing
Speaker 1: he remembered was leaving his work Christmas party and then
Speaker 1: going to an after party with some of his coworkers
Speaker 1: around seven fifteen pm. And the rest of it he
Speaker 1: didn't remember. He was traumatized at want to go to
Speaker 1: the hospital. He just went home. And then the next day,
Speaker 1: you know, I must have just had a crazy hangover,
Speaker 1: living wild and they may have just forgotten it. Just
Speaker 1: one friend helping out another, except that five weeks later
Speaker 1: he vanished after a similar night out with some coworkers
Speaker 1: and his body was found forty days later. Going back
Speaker 1: to your point, so this sounds like someone almost got.
Speaker 3: Him, Yeah, exactly, so he almost he knew this person
Speaker 3: or he encountered this person early on, it feels like.
Speaker 3: But the craziest thing, at least according to Kevin Gannon,
Speaker 3: Anthony Duarte, and Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor, his
Speaker 3: body when it was recovered only showed decomposition for two
Speaker 3: and a half days and he was gone for forty days.
Speaker 2: Okay, so like that's a weird one, but maybe that's
Speaker 2: Why isn't that just an outlier? Maybe sure, maybe that's
Speaker 2: a weird one.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a weird one. How about Todd geeb Geib
Speaker 3: He was missed for twenty one days and according to
Speaker 3: these three guys, he showed decomposition of two and a
Speaker 3: half days.
Speaker 2: But I still don't see the connection. They're trying to
Speaker 2: hang like hundreds of murders on this theory, and there's
Speaker 2: maybe two or three outliers that like are suspicious, and
Speaker 2: we know that people dispose of bodies and bodies of
Speaker 2: water all the time. I mean, it's the oldest trick
Speaker 2: in the book.
Speaker 1: But they haven't They've said they believe there could be
Speaker 1: hundreds of related murders, but they admit they can't prove
Speaker 1: it eat at least for that. And I see the point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because for one thing to be for one case to
Speaker 1: be a case of murder, we have to realize one
Speaker 1: case or two cases isolated cases could be cases of
Speaker 1: murder without inherently tying this all in together. For law
Speaker 1: enforcement overall, people are still pretty skeptical about this. You know,
Speaker 1: at this point, honestly, the majority of l eos don't
Speaker 1: think the has a lot of sands the police department
Speaker 1: in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, which is in their theory, it's one
Speaker 1: of the primary sites for this. They were in charge
Speaker 1: of eight of the investigations. They released a statement reiterating
Speaker 1: their initial conclusion that the deaths were accidental or non
Speaker 1: intentional drownings of inebriated young men, and they said that
Speaker 1: they have found no smiley faced symbols in connection with
Speaker 1: their cases. And so we see other agencies saying that
Speaker 1: the FBI released a statement in twenty two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight denying any sort of killer or group of killers.
Speaker 1: That multiple sources who disagree with Gannon and d'arte's theories
Speaker 1: say that we are creating a pattern where none exists,
Speaker 1: perhaps as an emotional reaction to the indescribable pain expectedly
Speaker 1: losing a loved one. At this point, Gannon and Darte
Speaker 1: still stand by their findings and their research. They insist
Speaker 1: the case or linked. They think the smiley faced killer
Speaker 1: or killers is or are still at large.
Speaker 2: And I'm with you, guys.
Speaker 1: There are specific cases where the official explanation leaves something
Speaker 1: to be desired.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we didn't even get into things that
Speaker 3: Gainan believes about the lividity lividity of some of these victims,
Speaker 3: and that's a term that's describing the pooling of blood
Speaker 3: in a dead body, like after death has occurred within
Speaker 3: a body. And you know, I mean, I get this
Speaker 3: exactly right. But around sixty hours after death, lividity occurs
Speaker 3: where blood pools, it just goes toward it uses gravity
Speaker 3: and heads towards the ground, right, and then there's discoloration
Speaker 3: on the body where the blood has pooled. And he
Speaker 3: at least you know this team Gannon and then the rest.
Speaker 3: They're saying that the lividity within these dead bodies is
Speaker 3: not matching up, and it appears that they were killed
Speaker 3: on land and then dumped in the water. So and
Speaker 3: here's here's the deal for me. Even if these cases
Speaker 3: aren't linked and it's not a single killer or a
Speaker 3: single group or something killing these people, there are individual
Speaker 3: cases out there that appear to have enough questionable things
Speaker 3: about them that Gannon and those guys have identified that
Speaker 3: some of these cases maybe should be expanded upon or
Speaker 3: could be expanded upon. That's where I'm sitting with it currently.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying, absolutely, and we have an
Speaker 1: abundance of.
Speaker 2: Other theories.
Speaker 1: This is pretty much an intro episode to the concepts,
Speaker 1: right sure, because we can deep dive into other theories,
Speaker 1: such as the once popular belief that the killer or
Speaker 1: killers was traveling via their their work right, and they
Speaker 1: were able to use that as a cover because, of course,
Speaker 1: as we all know, if you want to successfully get
Speaker 1: away with committing crimes against strangers, or if you want
Speaker 1: to if you want to murder someone and be a
Speaker 1: ghost and never be connected to it, one very efficient
Speaker 1: way to cover your tracks is to already have been
Speaker 1: traveling for work. And that's our classic episode for this evening.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
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