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Speaker 1: never know what stories of things we simply don't know
Speaker 1: the answer too. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways the podcast. I Am Devin, joined as usual
Speaker 1: by Joe Steve. I tricked you, guys. Both just made
Speaker 1: weird eyes at both of you. And it's October, so
Speaker 1: we're still in our Thinking Sideways Most Wanted and this
Speaker 1: week we had a tie. You may or may not
Speaker 1: notice that the it's Tuesday today, not a normal week,
Speaker 1: and actually usually on Tuesday's when we release episodes, they're
Speaker 1: what we call shorts. They're usually about half hour long.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how long this episode is going
Speaker 1: to be, probably longer than a normal short. But there
Speaker 1: will be another one which will also be shorter than
Speaker 1: a longer episode, shorter than a longer than a normal episode.
Speaker 1: Um that will come out this Thursday later. I'm sure
Speaker 1: many of you are waiting with bated breath, but we
Speaker 1: had to tie this week, so for the second most requested,
Speaker 1: the first runner up, runners up, the first runners up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: alrights America. Okay, so we one of the two stories
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, but tonight we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the Smiley Face murderers or the alleged Smiley
Speaker 1: Face murderers, or the Smiley Face killer theory. Okay, any
Speaker 1: other names? Okay. So two thousand eight, two retired New
Speaker 1: York police detectives went public with a theory that they've
Speaker 1: been developing um for years, almost a decade. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: this theory was that, since nine young white athletic men
Speaker 1: from areas ranging as far from New York to Minnesota
Speaker 1: had died from drowning, and according to Frank Gannon and
Speaker 1: Anthony Duarte they're too retired New York detectives that I
Speaker 1: referenced earlier, these men had all actually been murdered by
Speaker 1: a mass serial killer dubbed the Smiley Face Murderer or
Speaker 1: the Smiley Face Killer due to the fact that smiley
Speaker 1: faces had been painted near where the bodies had allegedly
Speaker 1: entered the water. Yeah, allegedly. Yeah, I'm gonna try real
Speaker 1: hard to keep allegedly and apparently and reportedly out of
Speaker 1: this episode. I'm gonna try not to let my bias
Speaker 1: seep in too hard and just uh it is so,
Speaker 1: but I apologize in advance if that seeps in a
Speaker 1: little bit. Okay, here's the facts as presented by the
Speaker 1: detectives to support their theory. Almost all of the victims
Speaker 1: were white, college aged males who were described as athletic,
Speaker 1: very good looking, and academically successful to me, yeah, obviously, um,
Speaker 1: And actually this caused them to theorize that the murderer
Speaker 1: was in fact jealous of them, so he would have
Speaker 1: been ugly, ostracized and dumb. So yeah, so the opposite
Speaker 1: of you. Wait, The victims were all seen at local
Speaker 1: parties or bars getting drunk prior to me, making them
Speaker 1: susceptible victims. Almost all of the victims were found in
Speaker 1: freezing winter months in northern States and no longer me
Speaker 1: and at least a dozen of the murders, meaning about
Speaker 1: that n of the cases. Um. A painted smiley face
Speaker 1: was found quote unquote near the place that detectives estimated
Speaker 1: the young men had entered the water, and near is
Speaker 1: never best, nobody ever says. Within this amount of radius.
Speaker 1: It's all just like near And then how how did
Speaker 1: they tie the other of the cam? Because they fit
Speaker 1: the description of the typical victim as in they were
Speaker 1: white college age males described as athletic, good looking, and
Speaker 1: academically successful, and they drowned and drunk in a bar
Speaker 1: horror party. So sure, Um, there's an article actually I
Speaker 1: found which I think we're going to put on the
Speaker 1: website in the UM actually by the Homicide Research Center
Speaker 1: called quote drowning the Smiley Faced murder theory. It was great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to quote from it of their
Speaker 1: described m O from what they could tell from what
Speaker 1: the detectives were saying. Quote. Central to the claim of
Speaker 1: serial homicide offending is the alleged linkage of victims by
Speaker 1: the discovery of painted graffiti proc symbol to the location
Speaker 1: of the victim. As many as twenty two smiley faces
Speaker 1: have been identified by investigators, as well as an occasional
Speaker 1: discovery of the word sinnes seua. That's hard sincecinema investigators
Speaker 1: interpret graffiti as taunting of the police. The theory of
Speaker 1: these deaths include offenders drugging the victims with GHB or
Speaker 1: a similar drug, abducting the victim, driving the victim around
Speaker 1: for hours in a van or truck, torturing them, and
Speaker 1: then slipping the body into the water. Detectives alleged that
Speaker 1: the motive for the dumping of the remains into the
Speaker 1: water is to wash away evidence. In the Jenkins case,
Speaker 1: a correctional inmate is said to have confused confessed guilt
Speaker 1: of the killing to a cellmate. A general assertion has
Speaker 1: been made that all of the identified victims are male,
Speaker 1: and finally, that people don't fall into the water by accident.
Speaker 1: Of course, not never happens fishman. Yeah. Also, I'll just
Speaker 1: mentioned quickly before we get too far into this that, um,
Speaker 1: some of these victims died on the same nights in
Speaker 1: totally different states. Like some of the victims, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: like or sorry of the forty five victims thousands of
Speaker 1: miles apart, which led the detectives to believe that maybe
Speaker 1: instead of being one serial killer, it was like a
Speaker 1: gang of serial killers the network that all went out
Speaker 1: on the same night. Your mission tonight, should you accepted?
Speaker 1: A group of guys who you know, were had decided
Speaker 1: that this was the kind of endeavor they were going
Speaker 1: to undertake and the opportunity struck for you know, both
Speaker 1: of them on the same night, Not that it was
Speaker 1: like planned that it would be like tonight twenty of
Speaker 1: you were going to go out. It was a couple
Speaker 1: of them. The way I under the way I read
Speaker 1: interpreted that was that they were an organized group that
Speaker 1: that tried to do it on at the same time.
Speaker 1: I gotta be honest with you, The sense that I
Speaker 1: got about when describing this group was like some dudes
Speaker 1: on four Chan. Yeah, you know, it was that it
Speaker 1: was just an anonymous group or whatever. But how many
Speaker 1: is so? No more than two people were killed on
Speaker 1: the same night then, not as far as I could tell.
Speaker 1: And granted, the number of actual victims ranges quite drastically
Speaker 1: depending on what source you site, so it's hard to
Speaker 1: decide who falls into this category and who doesn't. I
Speaker 1: was going to ask you about that, because when I
Speaker 1: was doing the research, I found a lot of sites
Speaker 1: that there were things where it would purport that this
Speaker 1: if you link to this site, it's got a list
Speaker 1: of the victims, and it's got all mapped up. And
Speaker 1: nine and a half out of ten times that site
Speaker 1: didn't exist anymore. And so there was there was no
Speaker 1: list of all these victims that were always referenced and
Speaker 1: the list of the victim is from but you could
Speaker 1: never actually find the list. So yeah, that was my
Speaker 1: big struggle with this story, bringing into just dead end. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit about that later. Did
Speaker 1: you get a copy of these guys books and they
Speaker 1: probably have a list in there? You know? I didn't
Speaker 1: because the cheapest one I could find was like thirty bucks?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Everywhere I said, it was like
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty bucks And if you wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: some places will let you rent books or e checkout
Speaker 1: books for a fee. The cheapest I ever saw it
Speaker 1: available to rent was sixty bucks. I saw it to
Speaker 1: rent for like thirty but yeah, not no, why expensive
Speaker 1: because he's buying it five copies couper costs, I don't know.
Speaker 1: So of these forty five victims or suspected victims, only
Speaker 1: two of them have officially been ruled murders or in
Speaker 1: suspicious deaths. The rest of them officially are accidental drownings.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk about these two murders in a little detail.
Speaker 1: Too specific ones, these two specific ones that people generally
Speaker 1: agree are at least suspicious. One of them, nobody disagrees
Speaker 1: was a murder. Another one of them, well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about that first one. But we don't know if it
Speaker 1: was a murder or not. It's a boy by the
Speaker 1: name boy, a young man by the name of Patrick McNeill. He,
Speaker 1: as far as any as far as I can tell
Speaker 1: and as as far as the Internet law goes, was
Speaker 1: the kind of spearhead case gannon, one of the kind
Speaker 1: of the biggest proponent detective of this theory of this
Speaker 1: the serial killer theory. He he worked on this case
Speaker 1: as a as a police officer. Yes, so it was
Speaker 1: when he was still serving, and it kind of stuck
Speaker 1: with him, all right. So Patrick McNeil, after a night
Speaker 1: of bar hopping with friends a quote incredibly drunk, unquote,
Speaker 1: Patrick told his friends that he was tired and he
Speaker 1: had an early class, so he was going to take
Speaker 1: the subway back to campus. He was a student at
Speaker 1: Fordham University, which is in New York. In New York. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually yeah. One of his female friends said that she
Speaker 1: was also ready to go, but as I can attest,
Speaker 1: as a lady, had to go to the bathroom first.
Speaker 1: It's hard when you're drunk, you know, you break the seal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you guys have been drinking with me.
Speaker 1: I'm being Yeah. So she went to the bathroom, and
Speaker 1: you know, she said, wait here, I'm gonna go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. She went to the bathroom, she came back,
Speaker 1: he was gone. Yeah. It was February six, as we said,
Speaker 1: in New York City. Ten days later, more than six
Speaker 1: people showed up to volunteer to help look for him,
Speaker 1: because you know, he had been reported missing. By this point.
Speaker 1: Police had searched hospital, soup kitchens and even um Rikers
Speaker 1: Island jail for him. By this point, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of all of the things that you would do, and
Speaker 1: more than ten thousand flyers had been hung all around
Speaker 1: New York City and all the way up to Young
Speaker 1: curs Uh. And then it wasn't until April seven that
Speaker 1: his body was finally found floating twelve miles downriver from
Speaker 1: where he had last been seen. I used the term
Speaker 1: just twelve miles. Most of the internet says a startling
Speaker 1: twelve miles. But after a couple of all the medical
Speaker 1: examiner said that he had a quote moderate amount of
Speaker 1: alcohol in his blood stream, in fact, actually the exact
Speaker 1: quote was more than a little and less than a
Speaker 1: lot of alcohol in his blood stream. Um and during
Speaker 1: that time. The New York medical examiners don't release exact
Speaker 1: blood alcohol numbers. I'm going to use that next time
Speaker 1: they get asked how much I've had to drink? Well,
Speaker 1: officer quote medical left than a lot. You know. The
Speaker 1: cop pulls me over and he asked me that I
Speaker 1: just go a lot so much? Why you're a little
Speaker 1: jealous job Sorry, yeah, geez. Patrick had, according to the
Speaker 1: original report, had no broken bones, no head trauma, and
Speaker 1: no physical injuries. His cause of death death was left undetermined,
Speaker 1: though they specified accidental undetermined. He was in good shape,
Speaker 1: apparently not as drunk as people had indicated, according to
Speaker 1: the medical examler. The medical examiner he had uh so
Speaker 1: nobody knows how he wound up in the river. And
Speaker 1: according to the original report, he had been in the
Speaker 1: water since he was disappeared, so it wasn't a later
Speaker 1: body dump. So it wasn't like a month later somebody
Speaker 1: pitched him into the river or something crazy like, according
Speaker 1: to the original report. Will continue to specify. According to
Speaker 1: the original report, who actually did find the original New
Speaker 1: York Times article online and read it, and this is
Speaker 1: all consistent with the original reporting. It's repeated over and
Speaker 1: over again throughout a lot of the literature. I'm presuming
Speaker 1: that his trip to the subway station didn't take him
Speaker 1: over any bodies of water, like to Let the River.
Speaker 1: As a note, the owner of the last bar that
Speaker 1: he was in that he left drunk paid um dred
Speaker 1: dollars in fines for serving what we in the industry
Speaker 1: called a visibly intoxicated person, under allegations that Patrick had
Speaker 1: actually fallen down in the bathroom he was so drunk
Speaker 1: and continued to get served. It's hard, but it's hard
Speaker 1: to know he so he was. He was twenty actually
Speaker 1: when he disappeared. He was actually a week away from
Speaker 1: his twenty first birthday, and so it's hard to know.
Speaker 1: At that age, you kind of presume he was an athlete.
Speaker 1: He'd probably been drinking a lot for you know, since
Speaker 1: he was a kid, since he was sixteen. He could
Speaker 1: probably handle his liquor. But it's also possible that that's
Speaker 1: not the case. It's possible that he hadn't ever really
Speaker 1: been drinking. And you know, when you first start drinking,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have that high of a blood
Speaker 1: alcohol content for it to like affect you because you
Speaker 1: don't know what's you're not prepared well and and you've
Speaker 1: got her. I don't know if you too remember this,
Speaker 1: but I remember this vividly, is that as suddenly able
Speaker 1: to go to the bar kind of guy you drink
Speaker 1: when you can't go to the bar, and so you
Speaker 1: have drinks and you you don't have a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of rapid succession. There's something about when you're first in
Speaker 1: the bar. Shot shot, shot, let's have shots, and so
Speaker 1: you down, you know, a bunch of booze really fast
Speaker 1: and it'll knock you on on your seat in no
Speaker 1: time flat. Or you're drinking things that have hidden the alcohol,
Speaker 1: you know, or there are a lot of different ways
Speaker 1: that a lower blood alcohol content can actually make you
Speaker 1: act and feel drunker than your blood alcohol content. Totally
Speaker 1: depends on what he was drinking, and you know, he
Speaker 1: was tired or like what you know, and he did
Speaker 1: drown though right since he fell in the bathroom. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you know, the girl goes off to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, he decides, what the hell I should
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom too for a climb on the subway,
Speaker 1: and he passes out and winds up with his head
Speaker 1: of the toilet and he drowns, and then the bartender
Speaker 1: finds him there. Well, it was undetermined, so it actually
Speaker 1: I'm actually joking. Yeah, no, I know, but that is
Speaker 1: that is a good point to reiterate that the medical
Speaker 1: examiner couldn't determine that he drowned, just that he was
Speaker 1: he had water in his lungs, but it wasn't it
Speaker 1: wasn't provable that that's what killed. Yes, all right, that
Speaker 1: all out of the way. A Gannon, I guess was
Speaker 1: a police officer. I couldn't ever quite get a handle
Speaker 1: on if he was just like a beat cop or
Speaker 1: if he was an investigator. He was a detective at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, that was the impression I had to
Speaker 1: But it was earlier in his career. He's not a
Speaker 1: particularly old guy. He's still around now. Not that seven
Speaker 1: was that long ago, but that was almost twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: in case anybody needs to feel really old. I think
Speaker 1: he was a coup for like fifteen or twenty years
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, no, no, I mean so he
Speaker 1: it was earlier in his career. Certainly he wrote a
Speaker 1: report about this case trying to get it reclassified as
Speaker 1: a homicide, and I've read the report. I think we'll
Speaker 1: probably link that one too. That will be one of
Speaker 1: the links that we put up for this because it's
Speaker 1: actually good to read his report. Apparently the investigators on
Speaker 1: the case, and because it was an unresolved case, this
Speaker 1: this kind of makes sense. They didn't release the full
Speaker 1: autopsy package, which means, you know, all of the the
Speaker 1: reports and all the pictures and all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: until two thousand nine for the public and two thousand
Speaker 1: eight to the family. And it was about a month
Speaker 1: after the package was released that Gannon put forth this
Speaker 1: this theory of the serial killer. So here's some additional
Speaker 1: stuff that Gannon says that he discovered about this case.
Speaker 1: Apparently based on the water currents of the easter. Ever,
Speaker 1: when Patrick was found, his body shouldn't have been where
Speaker 1: it was found. The allegation is that he would have
Speaker 1: had to have been abducted and dropped into the river
Speaker 1: at that point in order for him to have ended
Speaker 1: up there at all. I will know the East River
Speaker 1: for those of you that do not know, is was
Speaker 1: and still is an active shipping lane, so there's lots
Speaker 1: of big ships that go back and forth. I understand
Speaker 1: the theory of currents, but I also feel like that
Speaker 1: stuff gets disrupted sometimes by giant ships coming in and
Speaker 1: out the current. The current does go down stream, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, a witness apparently reported seeing a car
Speaker 1: falling Patrick that night. I that's literally the only information
Speaker 1: they were able to give, like a partial plate number
Speaker 1: that never went anywhere. I don't put a lot of
Speaker 1: stock into that. Patrick was found in just his genes
Speaker 1: underwear in socks. This caused the investigators to state that
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that he would have stripped the
Speaker 1: rest of his clothing off and jumped in the river
Speaker 1: because Patrick had less been seen wearing a like a
Speaker 1: plaid button up shirt, jeans, and some brown boots. I
Speaker 1: never saw mention of a jacket, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: it was like fagrees in February, three degrees fahrenheit. Thing
Speaker 1: think about it is, is it really makes me wonder
Speaker 1: is if he had his socks on, but he took
Speaker 1: his boots off and he was and he didn't tend
Speaker 1: to go swimming. Unlikely, but right, right, So if he
Speaker 1: took his boots off. Why didn't he take his socks
Speaker 1: off too? Yeah, that seems I agree. I agree, And
Speaker 1: you know, as I said, there's there's certainly some weird
Speaker 1: stuff about this case. I'm not going to refute that
Speaker 1: there are some things that will so we're going through
Speaker 1: this and we can go back and kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: pick it apart. But there's some weird stuff about it.
Speaker 1: But there's also a lot of stuff that just seems
Speaker 1: like you're grasping at straws. Yeah, yeah, no. Uh. The
Speaker 1: blood alcohol level, the actual number UM in Patrick's system,
Speaker 1: was actually eventually released to be point one six, which
Speaker 1: is twice the legal limit in America. And we do
Speaker 1: know that bodies do produce alcohol as they decomposed, so
Speaker 1: apparently the investigators were able to figure out based on
Speaker 1: the time that he was dead and blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: that blood alcohol level was likely more like point one two,
Speaker 1: which it would have been six strinks over the course
Speaker 1: of an hour. UM six strengths in an hour. That's
Speaker 1: pretty good. It's not bad. It's pretty true. I mean
Speaker 1: to be fair, like point oway feels pretty tipsy. Twice
Speaker 1: that feels pretty drunk. And I'm an experienced drinker, So yeah,
Speaker 1: for a twenty one year old, it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: The other part of this is Patrick he was He
Speaker 1: had been an athlete in in high school. He was
Speaker 1: six ft tall and a hundred and nine pounds, So
Speaker 1: the investigators say that he couldn't possibly have been acting
Speaker 1: as drunk as he was reported unless there was something
Speaker 1: else in play, like a drug of some sort. Patrick
Speaker 1: was also found on his back, which in drowning cases
Speaker 1: is incredibly rare, particularly for someone of his physique. If
Speaker 1: you have, um, a bunch of fat on your front, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, fat has a tendency to float,
Speaker 1: so that'll flip you over if you're like really overweight
Speaker 1: or a beast or anything like that. Um, but he
Speaker 1: was obviously not, so apparently that's a big thing. Additionally,
Speaker 1: the way that the blood settled in his body, the lividity,
Speaker 1: apparently indicated that he had died on his front and
Speaker 1: been on his front for the first at least eight hours.
Speaker 1: It takes eight hours, it's my understanding. It takes eight
Speaker 1: hours for a lividity to sit in, set in. But
Speaker 1: once it's set in, it's done. Pretty much. The blood
Speaker 1: has settled, it's done. Yeah, yeah, so apparently he the
Speaker 1: allegation is that he would have had to have died
Speaker 1: I had and been on his front for the first
Speaker 1: face down, at least the well face down. It doesn't say,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter where. If he had just rolled over
Speaker 1: in the water so that you just face up after
Speaker 1: you drowned and everything, that's you know, that doesn't that's
Speaker 1: you know, you would have to be for somebody to
Speaker 1: have to somebody to place him in their face up
Speaker 1: in the water, then they would have had to have
Speaker 1: face down somewhere. You're not going to throw your body
Speaker 1: in the water, leave it there for eight hours and
Speaker 1: then go back in your boat and turn it over. No. No,
Speaker 1: And then that's what Devin's getting at, is that he
Speaker 1: drowned face down. Yeah, well that if or he was
Speaker 1: faced down and then at some point. What all I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that he he died face down and was
Speaker 1: face down for the first eight hours. Whether it was
Speaker 1: in water or on land, it remains to be determined,
Speaker 1: especially since you know, we can just go into this
Speaker 1: right now, since it is an active shipping lane. It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem crazy out of the realm of possibilities to
Speaker 1: me that in the like four months that he was
Speaker 1: in the river to whatever the two months he was
Speaker 1: in the river, he could have gotten flipped over somehow.
Speaker 1: You know that that's reasonable to me. Whether or not
Speaker 1: you know land sea, I don't, But the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is is that it does seem that he
Speaker 1: died on his front. The autopsy also apparently stated that
Speaker 1: there were literature marks around his neck, which would indicate
Speaker 1: that he had been strangled, strangled with something there m
Speaker 1: there were fly eggs in his pubic hair, which suggested
Speaker 1: that he would have had to have been allowed to
Speaker 1: decompose on land in an area that was warmer than
Speaker 1: approximately forty degrees fahrenheit. Why does that have to be land?
Speaker 1: I mean it could be somewhere warmer but still in
Speaker 1: the water. Potentially good flies, don't They were like horseflies.
Speaker 1: They don't lay eggs in the water, So his pelvis
Speaker 1: would have had to have been above water for them
Speaker 1: to have And that's really unlikely, super unlikely, Yeah, super
Speaker 1: can I can? I I don't actually think that's super unlikely.
Speaker 1: I also think that explains why he doesn't have boots
Speaker 1: if he washes up on shore for a while under
Speaker 1: a dock or something, and some homeless dude finds seems like, hey,
Speaker 1: free pair of boots, nice shirt, I'll take that, and
Speaker 1: he's sitting there for a while. That would explain a
Speaker 1: why those things were gone, and be why he had
Speaker 1: flies on him because docks, you know, I mean, the
Speaker 1: docks aren't just against the sea wall. That's true, there
Speaker 1: is you know, the land does slope down underneath them.
Speaker 1: So that's why that's why I was. I had to
Speaker 1: bring that up because it just doesn't mean a whole
Speaker 1: lot to me. That's fair. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. There was
Speaker 1: some what they are calling severe blackening of Patrick's head,
Speaker 1: upper torso and lower waste area. The medical examiner says
Speaker 1: that this is decomposition due to exposure. Gannon disagrees. He
Speaker 1: thinks that it was actually burning that was sustained prior
Speaker 1: to Patrick's death, like we took a blowtorch to you burning,
Speaker 1: or thrown into a barrel that was on fire. Burn.
Speaker 1: Wait for a minute, that's fine, heay? Cool. Uh. They
Speaker 1: suggest that he was tied by his neck to a
Speaker 1: chair and then exposed to fire of some kind, causing
Speaker 1: his back to be largely protected from the burns, because
Speaker 1: you know, the middle of his back had no burns
Speaker 1: or anything like that. Okay, but they tied they tied
Speaker 1: into a chair. They would have tied his hands to
Speaker 1: the chair at least two right, Yeah, um okay. And
Speaker 1: then one of our favorite terms that we've talked about, Yeah, ever,
Speaker 1: Devon's favorite favorite thing ever. Yeah, apparently there was a
Speaker 1: really distinct lack of skin slippage. But I agree that
Speaker 1: that does kind of present a problem for the argument
Speaker 1: that he was in the water for more than say,
Speaker 1: like twenty four hours, because skin starts to slip off
Speaker 1: your body when it's been in the water for sustained
Speaker 1: periods of time, particularly two months. I just wonder about
Speaker 1: the temperature effects of the temperatures on that. If it's
Speaker 1: February when he goes in, it's frozen. Yes. They also
Speaker 1: maintained that the decomposition on his body was not consistent,
Speaker 1: rather that the top of him was like really decomposed,
Speaker 1: while the bottom of him was almost not decomposed at all,
Speaker 1: because he was wearing his jeans, I don't know, or
Speaker 1: because the top of him was maybe more out of
Speaker 1: the water. You know that he was wearing his shoes
Speaker 1: on a sloping bank. I don't know. They point out
Speaker 1: four distinct parts of like different stages of decomposition happening
Speaker 1: in his on his body, but I also don't think
Speaker 1: that's an argument for him being held on land either.
Speaker 1: You know, I just don't think if you're going to argue, well,
Speaker 1: his body was in different states of decomposition, well, like,
Speaker 1: how did that happen on land even then? Versus why
Speaker 1: is that a bigger problem than just saying, well, his
Speaker 1: feet were more submerged in colder water, so they're better
Speaker 1: preserved than the top of him. How did Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back and address some of the stuff that we've
Speaker 1: just talked about, because I think we can talk about
Speaker 1: some of it. As I said, I don't have a
Speaker 1: problem with Patrick's body maybe being rotated. It was an
Speaker 1: active shipping, as Steve suggested it is. I guess it's
Speaker 1: possible that he you know, kind of washed ashore for
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time, washed up on something whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the severe blackening um, according to the medical examiner report,
Speaker 1: was actually um like black spots, which I have the
Speaker 1: sense of being kind of more like cigarette burn type sizes,
Speaker 1: which the medical examiner says is like decomposition, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: So I not giants swathed skin, which is what I
Speaker 1: got the impression of when you read just Gammon's report. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're starting to get yeah. Yeah. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing is that there wasn't evidence of anything other than
Speaker 1: alcohol in his system, with the exception of their being
Speaker 1: really trace amounts of the g h B, which is
Speaker 1: a thing that naturally occurs in the body when we
Speaker 1: decompose a right, So take that as you will, okay.
Speaker 1: Gannon says that Patrick his theory about what happened to
Speaker 1: Patrick is that Patrick was grabbed, He was stalked and
Speaker 1: kidnapped and held on land and tortured and then murdered
Speaker 1: and then dropped into the river like three days before
Speaker 1: they found his body. He was he was disappeared for
Speaker 1: fifty days. His body was not recovered for fifty days.
Speaker 1: That presents problems in and of itself for me. You know,
Speaker 1: they say, well, the skins slippage, Well, okay, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: the skin slippage, that is a problem. I agree. The
Speaker 1: kind of damage you see to Patrick's body isn't super
Speaker 1: consistent with the kind of damage you would see from
Speaker 1: a body floating in the water. For fifty days. But
Speaker 1: they also say that his blood alcohol level was the
Speaker 1: point one too. But they say that he was held
Speaker 1: on land alive for like forty seven days Gannon and
Speaker 1: his investigators and then you know, killed and then dropped
Speaker 1: him the roof. So I don't I don't know. They
Speaker 1: can't have it both ways. They can't say he was
Speaker 1: held on land but his blood alcohol level was only this,
Speaker 1: but this, but he was killed just a couple of days.
Speaker 1: You know, they just can't have it both ways. Well,
Speaker 1: I think also keeping the guy on land and torturing
Speaker 1: him for forty seven days, he would have to have
Speaker 1: him tied up the entire time. There would be signs
Speaker 1: of that his ankles and his wrists. Yeah, or even
Speaker 1: if he was locked up somewhere, there would be you know,
Speaker 1: he would he wouldn't be eating properly, so like there
Speaker 1: would be physical sign of some kind of abuse. And
Speaker 1: even if he was only held for a couple of days,
Speaker 1: uh and tortured before he was killed and then was killed,
Speaker 1: you know, like three days in and then held on
Speaker 1: land for that long, then his body would have been
Speaker 1: in much more, much more advanced state of decomposition. One
Speaker 1: would think unless he was during the freezer. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there weren't signed I mean it didn't. There weren't signs
Speaker 1: of that anyway. It's it's weird for sure. I don't
Speaker 1: want to keep talking about it too much because I
Speaker 1: mean there's a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, on both
Speaker 1: on both sides, I think, you know, both on the
Speaker 1: medical examiner side and GM inside. Yeah, they you know,
Speaker 1: I can see where it could be killing maybe somebody
Speaker 1: he knew actually really had a passionate hatred of him
Speaker 1: and drugged. But that that that is completely counter to
Speaker 1: the theory. Yeah, that's completely if if it's one person
Speaker 1: who hated him, that's completely counter to this entire larger
Speaker 1: thing that he is being shoehorn into. Right, So that's
Speaker 1: the thing. Right, Let's take a step back now and say,
Speaker 1: regardless of whether or not Patrick McNeil was murdered, wasn't
Speaker 1: the work of a serial killer? Probably not, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: a just an individual. And so there's he's one of
Speaker 1: two weird cases of cases talking about something else. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about, are we, No, no, no, For a while,
Speaker 1: We're just going to briefly touch on another guy. His
Speaker 1: name is Chris Jenkins and he was absolutely, no questions asked, murdered,
Speaker 1: just there's no he was. There's pretty much no one disputes.
Speaker 1: Initially he was classified as a suicide. We could probably
Speaker 1: do an entire show on this guy. We might who knows.
Speaker 1: But on Halloween two thousand two, Chris was thrown out
Speaker 1: of a bar that he was in with his friends.
Speaker 1: Witnesses say that staff was instructed that he was not
Speaker 1: to be allowed back in, despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: was I think it was like twenty degrees fahrenheit outside.
Speaker 1: He was dressed in a cheap Indian costume because it
Speaker 1: was Halloween. It's like nylon, really really thin. And his coat,
Speaker 1: his cell phone, his money, everything. We're still inside with
Speaker 1: his friends, who apparently were having such a good time
Speaker 1: they didn't even realize their friend was gone. Halloween. Um.
Speaker 1: Four months later, Chris's body was found. He was just
Speaker 1: reported missing, and you know, they did a search for
Speaker 1: him and nobody found anything. His body was found four
Speaker 1: months later, floating, face up, arms crossed, frozen pretty much
Speaker 1: solid in the Mississippi River. It's possible that Chris was
Speaker 1: involved in a gang initiation beating, maybe thrown into the
Speaker 1: back of a van and tortured. It's not great. Um,
Speaker 1: whatever the outcome was for him, it was definitely unfortunate.
Speaker 1: But it was murder, and so he was beaten to death. No,
Speaker 1: I don't, I you know what, that's my question. You
Speaker 1: keep saying it was most definitely a murder, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I haven't read anything that shows me that it was
Speaker 1: a murder. Well, the way in which he was found.
Speaker 1: People don't like drown and then wash up with their
Speaker 1: arms crossed neatly across their chest and face up. There's
Speaker 1: that Buddies get messed with by people after the fact, sadly,
Speaker 1: pretty regular basis. We can find him and go, you know,
Speaker 1: I haven't you know the guy who hasn't has meds
Speaker 1: in two weeks and has wandered around and puts him
Speaker 1: to rest by putting his arms over his chest and
Speaker 1: shoving him back out into the water, thinking that he's
Speaker 1: a viking or something. You know, I mean, these things happen. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: he was. He was murdered. It's the police are still
Speaker 1: looking into why. So there's obviously, since it's an open case,
Speaker 1: details but but but he's also been lumped in too.
Speaker 1: It's the smiley face guys but he did drown right again.
Speaker 1: You don't know, I don't like I said that actually
Speaker 1: be a good way to kill somebody's it's like winter,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's it's winter out and it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of you grabbing. I had thrown off the bridge
Speaker 1: into the water, swim. He's going to die of exposed.
Speaker 1: He was not thrown off the bridge because the only
Speaker 1: bridge he could have been thrown off of had a
Speaker 1: really high retaining wall and he would have had to
Speaker 1: have been lifted. I think it was like a six
Speaker 1: foot tall they did. They did a metric on this.
Speaker 1: A six foot tall man would have had to have
Speaker 1: lifted this guy all the way above his body his
Speaker 1: body height, and then thrown him twelve ft to throw
Speaker 1: him entirely clear, like into the river, to throw him
Speaker 1: entirely clear of all of the stuff that was below
Speaker 1: the river, to have him not have the bones broken
Speaker 1: and his body that he didn't have broken in his body,
Speaker 1: So that seemed pretty unlikely. Also, there was surveillance cameras
Speaker 1: on the bridge and that didn't happen. Okay, those are
Speaker 1: the two guys who were murdered of the forty five
Speaker 1: that were murdered and the two most likely the two
Speaker 1: most murdered of them. Like that, So let's talk about
Speaker 1: theories real quick. We're doing typical Devon style. It's it's
Speaker 1: real or it's not real, So let's start with real.
Speaker 1: I'll grant you that that is it does seem like
Speaker 1: a lot of white college aged athletic men falling into
Speaker 1: bodies of water. But I'll also grant you that um
Speaker 1: to borrow a phrase, the killer could have a different name,
Speaker 1: and that's alcoholism. Alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: blog that catalogs literally every single missing person that could
Speaker 1: possibly fit into this m O, and it's pretty fascinating
Speaker 1: and has probably more than hundreds to be honest, I
Speaker 1: didn't count of entries. But the official line, like I
Speaker 1: said on the Smiley Face, Killer has claimed forty five
Speaker 1: victims between and now, which actually only yeah years, which
Speaker 1: really only means that that's like two and a half
Speaker 1: drunk dudes falling into a body of water year. More
Speaker 1: than two and a half drunk dudes fall into a
Speaker 1: body of water every year and don't come back out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's that it's not real, And I'll tell you
Speaker 1: why wait, wait that that that's why it's real. That's
Speaker 1: why it's real. Okay, yeah it's it's not. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you lots of reasons why. Let's talk about reasons
Speaker 1: why there's a real lack of m O here. None
Speaker 1: of the smiley faces that were found close to the
Speaker 1: bodies um match, and in fact, the investigators admit that
Speaker 1: there's literally no common reality between any of them. There's
Speaker 1: no common stroke, there's no common style. There are different colors,
Speaker 1: different paints, different ages, different type of paints, different ways
Speaker 1: of you know, smiles, some of them with the circle,
Speaker 1: some of them are just the two lines in the smile. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did did they ever in these cases that they actually
Speaker 1: go out and find any locals who actually hung out
Speaker 1: near the drowning spots like fishing or whatever, and just
Speaker 1: asked them how long to smiley face had been there,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing that it's a supposed entry point.
Speaker 1: They don't know if that's where the body went in.
Speaker 1: But also, I mean more than that, like several, but
Speaker 1: not all of these cases have smiley faces attached them.
Speaker 1: In fact, you will notice we just spent a half
Speaker 1: an hour talking about Patrick O'Neill. Guess what they didn't
Speaker 1: talk about at all with that case. Smiley face, no
Speaker 1: smiley face. Probably there was one, because guess what, it's
Speaker 1: New York City, and I swear to you, we could
Speaker 1: walk three blocks from where we are right now and
Speaker 1: find at least five smiley faces graffiti on things. You
Speaker 1: could be in the middle of the red Woods. I'm
Speaker 1: not lying. I was in the Redwoods recently. You walk
Speaker 1: to a tree and there's a smiley face card carved
Speaker 1: in the stump. You were never more than five miles
Speaker 1: away from a smiley face graffiti. So there's that. Yep,
Speaker 1: they're very popular, very happy to Yeah. Additionally, the two
Speaker 1: people that we just talked about the outliers, they're they're
Speaker 1: just that they're outliers. They're not the norm. The two
Speaker 1: guys that we just talked about, they're the outliers in
Speaker 1: this case. And actually one of them, I'm not even
Speaker 1: convinced was actually murdered. And how are they the outliers? Well,
Speaker 1: all all of the other forty five victims are typical
Speaker 1: drowning cases. They were all found face down in position
Speaker 1: with you, These are outliers because there's some o there's
Speaker 1: something suspicious going on. Literally every single other victim as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, just seems like it's a
Speaker 1: typical drowning. Okay, Okay. The other graffiti that was found
Speaker 1: thea it was this is graffiti that was found also
Speaker 1: kind of near some of the bodies they found, And
Speaker 1: this is the one they say is taunting the police. Um,
Speaker 1: they say both of them are taunting the police. Okay,
Speaker 1: but this is it's just graffiti. I mean, I lived
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. These this graffiti was only found near
Speaker 1: the bodies. In the Midwest, it's a pretty common term.
Speaker 1: There's lots of you know, none orders and grocery stores
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that bear the same name. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to say about that. It's just graffiti,
Speaker 1: you guys. Yeah, it sounds fair to me. But also,
Speaker 1: as we talked about before, there's no correlation. It's never
Speaker 1: like and five paces from the body, there was no
Speaker 1: it's like within I don't know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: just so, as previously stated, nineties six percent of the
Speaker 1: victims showed no evidence of trauma or anything weird. Any
Speaker 1: foul play questioned. And you know what's what's really more
Speaker 1: rare than m drunk guys doing stupid things. Well, that's
Speaker 1: not rare at all. But well, but you know what's
Speaker 1: more rare than that, it's homicidal drownings. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: they only account for two tenths of one percent of
Speaker 1: all of the killings in the United States. It's not
Speaker 1: that easy to do that. It's really hard. It's a
Speaker 1: lot easy to stab somebody or shoeing. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: in a city in Wisconsin where you know, a fair
Speaker 1: amount of these because it's cold and whatever of these drownings,
Speaker 1: the supposed murders happen. In a period of four years,
Speaker 1: the police have stopped more than fifty young, drunk athletic
Speaker 1: males from approaching the river there. Do you know why?
Speaker 1: Why do you know why the men are approaching? It
Speaker 1: seems like it would be a fun place to pee. Exactly.
Speaker 1: We're drunk, we have to pee, and as men, that
Speaker 1: means we have to pee on something, and it's fun
Speaker 1: to pee on the ice. Yeah, there you go, snow.
Speaker 1: We all did a school like you didn't, but Joe
Speaker 1: and I did just what's kind of illegible and your yeah,
Speaker 1: this is harder or something. No, we totally live off. Sorry.
Speaker 1: So to add to this, Gannon, he was really he
Speaker 1: was really obsessed with the Patrick McNeill case, and reports
Speaker 1: are actually he was. He was obsessed to kind of
Speaker 1: an unhealthy level, and he has been kind of the
Speaker 1: primary proponent of this theory. He's certainly gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of people on board. That's there, there's no question about that.
Speaker 1: But like we said before, there's not even a mention
Speaker 1: of a smiley face in conjunction with the McNeil case.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to slander again in because I
Speaker 1: do I do believe that he's a really authentic, true
Speaker 1: investigator who just wants to get to the bottom of
Speaker 1: this this murder that's haunted him, or this case that's
Speaker 1: haunted him, whether it wants to hold him up. But
Speaker 1: I think it's more than that. I think he probably
Speaker 1: made a promise to himself that he would get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of it. And I but I just it
Speaker 1: just seems like he's looking for something to make it
Speaker 1: all makes sense and it's just not there. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so sad, But yeah, and also you know, of
Speaker 1: course he wants to make a name for himself too.
Speaker 1: It might be that some of that there, But like
Speaker 1: I said, I do think his intentions at the core
Speaker 1: are are good. I do think that he just wants
Speaker 1: to solve this case or these cases, because he's actually investigating, um,
Speaker 1: the Jenkins case as well, So he has two unsolved
Speaker 1: deaths on his hands that he really wants to solve.
Speaker 1: And and I can see the tendency to kind of
Speaker 1: want to sensationalize it and make it a big thing.
Speaker 1: But I just I don't see it. Guys. You know,
Speaker 1: you guys all wanted to hear us talk about this.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you were hoping for. You know
Speaker 1: us pretty well by now, A lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of people requested this one. A lot of I can
Speaker 1: is this just seems like a desperate attempt to link
Speaker 1: things together. Yeah, I mean even you know, I think
Speaker 1: you guys probably looked at some of the Reddit threads
Speaker 1: that came up, and even in those, it's kind of this.
Speaker 1: I think it's a human nature to want to find
Speaker 1: some meaning and death that was meaningful to you. You know,
Speaker 1: there are people on these raddit threads who are saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this exactly mirrors what happened to my
Speaker 1: you know, my cousin, Uh, except that he didn't drown.
Speaker 1: He was just found dead because he hit his head
Speaker 1: in this construction site. But it wasn't accidental. There's no
Speaker 1: way it was accidental. And there was a smiley face
Speaker 1: that was graffiti, you know. And it's just I understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, I do. I at the core of me,
Speaker 1: as a human who sympathetic, I understand the want to say, like, no,
Speaker 1: he couldn't have just been drunk and done something dumb.
Speaker 1: He fits this, he fits this mold, but it so
Speaker 1: on that downer. Do you have anything to add to this?
Speaker 1: I want to throw down the gauntlet to the smiley
Speaker 1: face killer and say, just go pick some athletic young
Speaker 1: man here in town and kill him and leave a
Speaker 1: smiley face, but make it an upside down from a smile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: andes have the eyes be a T and an s.
Speaker 1: Here we go. Then we'll know. Yeah, well yeah, we
Speaker 1: definitely that kind of exposure. Way to go. YouTube. We'll
Speaker 1: definitely revisit this whole thing if that happens. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I did reference some links if you're interested in this case,
Speaker 1: they're probably a pretty good start from the horse's mouths
Speaker 1: if you will um. Those will be posted on our website,
Speaker 1: along with a link to download a link to donate
Speaker 1: a link um to buy shirts or do whatever you
Speaker 1: want forever we haven't. That website is Thinking Sideways Podcast
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Speaker 1: not all of that having been said, we'll talk to
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Speaker 1: a good one very soon. By