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The Smiley Face Killers Are Still Out There podcast · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: He was smart, and he was friendly, the kind of
0:02
Speaker 1: guy that you would trust to walk you home. And
0:05
Speaker 1: one night he would leave a bar alone and he
0:07
Speaker 1: would disappear into the dark, And six weeks later his
0:11
Speaker 1: body would be found in a river, no sign of
0:13
Speaker 1: a struggle, no suspects, just a smiley face painted on
0:17
Speaker 1: a wall nearby. And then it happened again and again
0:22
Speaker 1: and again, forty times across eleven states. So are these
0:27
Speaker 1: all just tragic coincidences, collective hallucination maybe, or are we
0:33
Speaker 1: staring straight into the face of America's most ignored serial killer? Crime, conspiracy, guts,
0:40
Speaker 1: serial killers, and murder all things that I love to
0:43
Speaker 1: consume and I know you do too, You sick, twisted, intellectual,
0:46
Speaker 1: beautiful right screwed it up. I'm not redoing it. And anyway,
0:53
Speaker 1: today we are talking about an infamous, infamous case, very
0:59
Speaker 1: highly recommended in the comments. So here we are today,
1:02
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about the smiley face murders.
1:06
Speaker 1: So with that further ado, let's unbacala sat bouts mock
1:09
Speaker 1: FIV down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust
1:12
Speaker 1: through the swinshield into this ignored case together. Patrick McNeil
1:36
Speaker 1: was twenty one years old and he was a junior
1:38
Speaker 1: at Fordham University and he was majoring in accounting and
1:41
Speaker 1: he was known for his very clean cut appearances, social ease,
1:45
Speaker 1: and his ambition. After all, he wanted to join the
1:48
Speaker 1: FBI after graduation, not an easy feat, and his friends
1:51
Speaker 1: would describe him as confident and very well like, just
1:55
Speaker 1: an all around great guy, and his roommates would even
1:58
Speaker 1: call him a real ladies man. Night of February sixteenth,
2:01
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Patrick would go out with his friends
2:04
Speaker 1: to a bar on Manhattan's Upper east Side, something he
2:07
Speaker 1: did on a pretty regular basis, and this bar was
2:09
Speaker 1: called the Dapper Dog, a very popular forum hangout. So
2:12
Speaker 1: Patrick would go out with his friends and hang out
2:14
Speaker 1: at the bar, but at some point during the night,
2:16
Speaker 1: he started to feel pretty sick and witnesses would recall
2:19
Speaker 1: seeing him actually vomiting in the bathroom. So he eventually
2:22
Speaker 1: decided to leave the bar, telling his friends that he
2:25
Speaker 1: would just head back to the campus by subway by himself,
2:28
Speaker 1: so he would say goodbye to all of his friends,
2:29
Speaker 1: but one of his friends actually said that he was
2:31
Speaker 1: going to join him, so he would go outside and
2:34
Speaker 1: wait for his friend, but he would actually just never
2:36
Speaker 1: show up outside, so he just thought, Okay, he probably
2:38
Speaker 1: just wants to stay at the bar, so I'm just
2:40
Speaker 1: going to go alone. Which as a woman, it's just
2:42
Speaker 1: something we just wouldn't do, you know, not something we'd
2:47
Speaker 1: do is leave alone. But as a man, pretty normal
2:50
Speaker 1: and pretty common. And what happened next has been the
2:53
Speaker 1: subject of speculation for over two decades. So eyewitnesses on
2:58
Speaker 1: Second Avenue reported seeing Patrick stumbling along the sidewalk, clearly
3:02
Speaker 1: intoxicated because he was just at a bar, but they
3:05
Speaker 1: also saw something else, and that was a double parked vehicle,
3:09
Speaker 1: and his vehicle started to slowly trail him, matching his
3:13
Speaker 1: pace and even turning when he turned creepy as hell,
3:17
Speaker 1: and Patrick would be last seen near East ninetieth Street,
3:21
Speaker 1: heading toward the direction of the East River, and at
3:24
Speaker 1: this point, by witness accounts, the car was still following him.
3:27
Speaker 1: And after that, Patrick McNeil would never be seen alive again.
3:30
Speaker 1: So obviously his family would notice that Patrick went missing
3:34
Speaker 1: and they would call it into the police. So the
3:36
Speaker 1: NYPD and his family and countless volunteers in New York
3:40
Speaker 1: searched tirelessly for Patrick, and they would distribute over ten
3:44
Speaker 1: thousand posters, turning it into one of the city's most
3:47
Speaker 1: famous missing persons cases. But weeks and weeks would pass,
3:51
Speaker 1: and then fifty days later, on April seventh, nineteen ninety seven,
3:56
Speaker 1: his body would be found floating in the East River
3:59
Speaker 1: near a pier in Brooklyn, which was roughly twelve miles
4:02
Speaker 1: from where he was last seen. And he would be
4:04
Speaker 1: found wearing only jeans and socks, floating face up in
4:08
Speaker 1: the water, which is uncommon for accidental drownings, and the
4:12
Speaker 1: medical examiner listed the cause of death as drowning, the
4:15
Speaker 1: manner of death undetermined, and his blood alcohol content was
4:19
Speaker 1: actually recorded at zero point one six, which is twice
4:22
Speaker 1: the legal limit to drive. But he wasn't driving, he
4:25
Speaker 1: was just walking. But there was unusual details that stood
4:29
Speaker 1: out because despite the cold temperatures, fly larvae were discovered
4:33
Speaker 1: on the body, which is an anomaly since insect activity
4:36
Speaker 1: is typically dormant in winter months. Doctor Cyril Wett would
4:39
Speaker 1: even quote to say, I'm saying that the fly larvae
4:42
Speaker 1: have been laid in the groin area. It's an indoor fly,
4:45
Speaker 1: could not have been an outdoor fly. It was an
4:47
Speaker 1: indoor fly and the larvae were there did not move
4:50
Speaker 1: ahead into the later stage. So we have a body
4:53
Speaker 1: that was already dead before it was placed in the water.
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Speaker 1: I would call it homicide, yes, And there were also
4:59
Speaker 1: reported signs that Patrick may have been bound and possibly
5:03
Speaker 1: burned before being placed in the water, and retired NYPD
5:07
Speaker 1: detective Kevin Gannon, who worked to this case, would later
5:10
Speaker 1: state that he believed Patrick McNeil had been abducted, held
5:14
Speaker 1: for an extended period of time, and then was murdered,
5:17
Speaker 1: and that he wasn't just a simple victim of accidental drowning.
5:20
Speaker 1: But Patrick's case would just close. But Kevin Gannon's investigation
5:25
Speaker 1: had only just begun, and soon he would find other
5:28
Speaker 1: young men with eerily similar profiles who also vanished near water,
5:33
Speaker 1: who were also ruled as just drownings, but were completely unexplained.
5:37
Speaker 1: So Patrick McNeil's case might have been the beginning, but
5:41
Speaker 1: it didn't end with him, because in the years that followed,
5:43
Speaker 1: similar cases began servicing, and not just in New York,
5:47
Speaker 1: but across the country, different cities, same victim profile, and
5:51
Speaker 1: the same tragic end. Young Men in their early twenties,
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Speaker 1: college students, athletes, and high performers. And in some of
5:58
Speaker 1: those cases where the body were found, something else appeared nearby,
6:02
Speaker 1: something seemingly innocuous, and it was a smiley face. And
6:07
Speaker 1: then there was Lucas Homan and he would be twenty
6:09
Speaker 1: one years old when he was last seen at Octoberfest
6:12
Speaker 1: in Lacrosse, Wisconsin in September two thousand and six, and
6:16
Speaker 1: during Octoberfest he would actually become separated with his friends
6:19
Speaker 1: at the festivities, and days later his body would be
6:22
Speaker 1: found near the shore of the Mississippi River and the
6:24
Speaker 1: autopsy would note injuries to his heads, hands, and arms,
6:29
Speaker 1: as well as a footprint shaped bruise on his forehead,
6:32
Speaker 1: and authorities would initially rule this as an accidental drowning.
6:35
Speaker 1: But near the site where he was found was another
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Speaker 1: smiley face, which like also with the amount of bruises
6:42
Speaker 1: on this person, doesn't it look like he was beat
6:44
Speaker 1: and held captive and then thrown in the river. The
6:48
Speaker 1: neglect in these cases is astounding. And then there was
6:51
Speaker 1: Todd Gheeb and he would vanish when he was only
6:53
Speaker 1: twenty two years old while attending a bonfire party in
6:57
Speaker 1: rural Michigan in June of two thousand and five and
7:00
Speaker 1: at the bonfire. Eventually he would kind of disappear, and
7:03
Speaker 1: then he would call his friend saying I'm in a field,
7:06
Speaker 1: but then the call would completely drop and he would
7:09
Speaker 1: never be heard from again until he was found three
7:12
Speaker 1: weeks later, with his body found in a private lake.
7:15
Speaker 1: And what's odd is that he was found upright in
7:18
Speaker 1: the water with his head and shoulders above the surface,
7:22
Speaker 1: a very deeply unnatural position for a drowning victim. And
7:26
Speaker 1: what's also odd is that that lake had been searched
7:29
Speaker 1: previously as well, so it's almost like he was dumped
7:32
Speaker 1: in this lake later on after the first search was done,
7:35
Speaker 1: and a toxicology screen would indicate that alcohol and antidepressants
7:39
Speaker 1: were found in his system, but he was reportedly not
7:42
Speaker 1: suffering from any sort of depression at the time. But
7:45
Speaker 1: something else didn't add up because his body showed minimal decomposition,
7:51
Speaker 1: which was extremely unusual given that it would have been
7:54
Speaker 1: present if he actually died on the day of his disappearance,
7:57
Speaker 1: leading experts to question whether he had been in the
8:00
Speaker 1: water the entire time, or whether he had been somewhere
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Speaker 1: else before he had died. And to boot nearby on
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Speaker 1: a tree was you guessed it a painted smiley face.
8:11
Speaker 1: Tommy Booth was twenty four when he disappeared from a
8:14
Speaker 1: bar in Woodland, Pennsylvania, on January nineteenth, two thousand and eight,
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Speaker 1: and he was celebrating a friend's twenty first birthday on
8:21
Speaker 1: that night, and surveillance cameras would show that Tommy would
8:24
Speaker 1: enter the bar, but he would never leave, and two
8:26
Speaker 1: weeks later his body would be discovered in a creek
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Speaker 1: behind the bar, and he would be found with full
8:32
Speaker 1: rigor mortis, which usually dissipates somewhere between twenty four to
8:36
Speaker 1: thirty six hours after death. And for those of you
8:38
Speaker 1: who don't know what rigor mortis is, it's when the
8:40
Speaker 1: body gets really stiff after death, like almost immovable. And
8:43
Speaker 1: this actually suggested that he hadn't been in the water
8:46
Speaker 1: for the full duration of his disappearance, and spray painted
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Speaker 1: nearby someone had left an eerie smiley face. And then
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Speaker 1: there was William Hurley, a twenty four year old Navy
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Speaker 1: veteran who disappeared after leaving a Boston Bruwer game on
9:00
Speaker 1: October of two thousand and nine. Before he left, he
9:03
Speaker 1: would call his fiance for a ride, but once she
9:05
Speaker 1: arrived shortly after he was gone, and six days later
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Speaker 1: his body was recovered from the Charles River and an
9:11
Speaker 1: autopsy found blunt force trauma to his head, eye socket,
9:15
Speaker 1: and his leg, and toxicology revealed something else, which was
9:19
Speaker 1: alcohol in GHB, a drug often used to incapacitate victims,
9:25
Speaker 1: and his death would be ruled in undetermined drowning. And
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Speaker 1: once again there was a smiley face near the river.
9:31
Speaker 1: And then there was twenty one year old Chris Jenkins.
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Speaker 1: He was a student at the University of Minnesota and
9:37
Speaker 1: on Halloween Night two thousand and two, he left a
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Speaker 1: bar in downtown Minneapolis and was never seen again. And
9:43
Speaker 1: four months later his body would be recovered from the
9:46
Speaker 1: Mississippi River and he was still fully dressed in his
9:49
Speaker 1: Halloween costume. So authorities initially ruled this as an accidental drowning,
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Speaker 1: but in two thousand and six, after years of pressure
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Speaker 1: from his family, the Minneapolis Police Department reclassed sified his
10:00
Speaker 1: death as a homicide. It's just so sad that like
10:03
Speaker 1: the family had to pressure the police into considering this
10:06
Speaker 1: case as a homicide, Like, do your fucking job, And
10:10
Speaker 1: to Detective Kevin Gannon, the detective who was on Patrick
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Speaker 1: McNeil's case, who was the first case. This wasn't just
10:16
Speaker 1: a win for the family, It was a sort of validation,
10:20
Speaker 1: proof that one of the earlier cases had been mishandled
10:24
Speaker 1: and that it could fit the pattern. He had begun
10:27
Speaker 1: tracking because one case is a tragedy and two is
10:30
Speaker 1: maybe a coincidence. But when young men across the country
10:34
Speaker 1: begin vanishing under almost identical circumstances after nights out drinking,
10:39
Speaker 1: always found in water, often with smiley faced graffiti nearby,
10:43
Speaker 1: at what point do you stop calling it chance? And
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Speaker 1: that is the exact question Retired detectives Kevin Gannon and
10:51
Speaker 1: Anthony Dwartz, who actually joined the Gannon investigation, were asking
10:55
Speaker 1: because they weren't seeing isolated drownings. They were seeing a
10:59
Speaker 1: pattern emerge, a mark, a symbol, a face, and sometimes
11:03
Speaker 1: it was large and cartoonish, and other times it was
11:06
Speaker 1: kind of hastily scrawled, but it was seemingly always nearby,
11:10
Speaker 1: and always just out of place enough to feel wrong.
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Speaker 1: But to most investigators these were just coincidences, because graffiti
11:18
Speaker 1: is in fact pretty much everywhere and smiley faces are
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Speaker 1: extremely common. But to Gannon and dwart they were signatures,
11:27
Speaker 1: though they weren't left at every single crime scene, so
11:30
Speaker 1: they were not predictable, but seemingly intentional enough to at
11:34
Speaker 1: least suggest taunting or a pattern or a ritual. So
11:43
Speaker 1: by the mid two thousands, what started as a lingering
11:46
Speaker 1: suspicion had grown into something far more disturbing, and retired
11:50
Speaker 1: NYPD detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Dwart weren't just reviewing
11:55
Speaker 1: cold cases at this point. They were tracking the pattern,
11:58
Speaker 1: as I said before, and this pattern span and dozens
12:01
Speaker 1: of cities, and it was a pattern that no one
12:03
Speaker 1: else seemed to be seeing for some reason. So by
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Speaker 1: this point the team had compiled a list of over
12:09
Speaker 1: forty young men and all of them were found in
12:12
Speaker 1: bodies of water and ruled as drownings and all just
12:15
Speaker 1: deemed accidents. But and Duart, the similarities were just impossible
12:20
Speaker 1: to ignore. But to police departments they were just unrelated tragedies.
12:24
Speaker 1: So Gannon and Dwart started to put all of these
12:27
Speaker 1: pieces together and a map started to take shape. And
12:30
Speaker 1: the shape was not random, and to make sense of it,
12:33
Speaker 1: the team needed more than investigative instinct. They needed someone
12:37
Speaker 1: who could look at the data and explain from the outside,
12:40
Speaker 1: and that's when professor doctor Lee Gilbertson came into the picture.
12:44
Speaker 1: It was a criminal justice professor and expert in organized
12:48
Speaker 1: criminal behavior from Saint Clown University in Minnesota, and Gilbertson
12:51
Speaker 1: hadn't necessarily set out to solve the case. In fact,
12:55
Speaker 1: his introduction actually came through the classroom because he would
12:58
Speaker 1: actually assign the deaths of several young men as a
13:01
Speaker 1: case study for a graduate course in criminal profiling. So
13:04
Speaker 1: at first it was just academic curiosity because the cases
13:08
Speaker 1: themselves were bizarre, but they were also very distant, until,
13:12
Speaker 1: of course, the similarities began to pile up. So then
13:16
Speaker 1: came the phone call and detectives Gen and Dart actually
13:19
Speaker 1: saw the project online and called them to collaborate. And
13:22
Speaker 1: when Gilbertson first initially examined the case files, he didn't
13:26
Speaker 1: just rudge to judgment, which I think is good. He
13:28
Speaker 1: approached this theory with great caution, constantly looking for holes
13:32
Speaker 1: and inconsistencies, So he wasn't necessarily trying to prove their point.
13:37
Speaker 1: He was just trying to understand it at this point.
13:40
Speaker 1: But he would say patterns were there. There was the
13:42
Speaker 1: same profile, same behaviors and same aftermath, and the most
13:47
Speaker 1: telling actually was the same terrain because Gilbertson saw what
13:51
Speaker 1: the others different, and that was that the geography actually
13:54
Speaker 1: might be the key because the victims weren't being found
13:57
Speaker 1: in obscure locations. They were actually being found inside of
14:00
Speaker 1: patterns along specific river paths, in proximity to college towns,
14:05
Speaker 1: and within certain travel corridors. So he argued that the
14:08
Speaker 1: locations actually weren't accidental, they were deliberately chosen. So Gilbertson
14:14
Speaker 1: would pose a theory of his own, one even darker
14:17
Speaker 1: than the idea of a loan serial killer, because he
14:19
Speaker 1: claimed that this didn't look like it was the work
14:21
Speaker 1: of one person, but instead looked like the work of
14:25
Speaker 1: a network. So, according to Gilbertson, these cases didn't resemble
14:29
Speaker 1: a serial killer's hunting ground, but a disturbed model more
14:33
Speaker 1: akin to a gang or cell based activity, essentially multiple individuals,
14:39
Speaker 1: which is just.
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Speaker 2: Even more terrifying and horrible.
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Speaker 1: And he would suggest that they were operating independently, but
14:46
Speaker 1: they were also connected in some way and they would
14:48
Speaker 1: select targets based off of certain criteria, leaving behind obscure,
14:53
Speaker 1: possibly symbolic marks. The smiley face, but they hadn't quite
14:57
Speaker 1: found something to link it all together at this p
15:00
Speaker 1: point again and Gilbertson began applying geographical profiling two new cases,
15:04
Speaker 1: so they would locate high risk areas, tracing victim movements,
15:08
Speaker 1: analyzing proximity to waterways, bars, and surveillance blind spots. So
15:13
Speaker 1: what they were building wasn't just a theory, but it
15:16
Speaker 1: was a map, and in the very center of the
15:19
Speaker 1: map a crude mocking symbol, one that kept appearing near
15:23
Speaker 1: the water and one that would give this theory its name.
15:27
Speaker 1: A you guessed its smiley face. But as I was
15:30
Speaker 1: saying before, the symbol wasn't consistent in design. There was
15:33
Speaker 1: no single style, no brand like stamp that's screamed serial killer.
15:39
Speaker 1: Like a lot of serial killers we go through, they
15:41
Speaker 1: have a very specific mo and they do certain rituals
15:45
Speaker 1: like leaving marks or taking specific items. And in this
15:47
Speaker 1: case it's a smiley face. But since it's not consistent,
15:50
Speaker 1: it really doesn't seem like it's one person. But this
15:53
Speaker 1: kind of just added to the unease because smiley faces
15:56
Speaker 1: were showing up within walking distance of recovery sites, often
15:59
Speaker 1: with than twenty feet. But again it wasn't at every
16:03
Speaker 1: single scene, but in just enough of them to start
16:06
Speaker 1: to raise questions. So in the cases like Tommy, Todd,
16:09
Speaker 1: William and Lucas, the smiley face was there, and sometimes
16:13
Speaker 1: they weren't alone because Gannon's team claimed that they actually
16:16
Speaker 1: found additional undisclosed markings at some of the sites. Some
16:20
Speaker 1: were runs, arrows and abstract figures, but they chose to
16:24
Speaker 1: not release those symbols publicly because they didn't want to
16:28
Speaker 1: inspire copycats or alert who was ever behind it. Because
16:31
Speaker 1: the team believed that these symbols were kind of a
16:34
Speaker 1: mocking calling card, and in interviews and briefings, Gannon started
16:37
Speaker 1: to refer to the perpetrators or whoever they were, as
16:41
Speaker 1: part of a syndicate, which is a loose network of
16:43
Speaker 1: individuals or cells, possibly communicating across cities, and he suspected
16:48
Speaker 1: that the group selected victims with great care, targeting young
16:51
Speaker 1: men based on profile, vulnerability, and opportunity, and each act
16:55
Speaker 1: carried out in a different place, each crime was dressed
16:59
Speaker 1: as an accident, and each message was tagged with a smile.
17:02
Speaker 1: So at this point the press just needed a name,
17:05
Speaker 1: of course, and soon they would have one. The smiley
17:08
Speaker 1: face killers. So what started is just a theory was
17:11
Speaker 1: now a brand, and one that would spread across the Internet,
17:15
Speaker 1: to message boards, true crime communities, and headline after headline.
17:20
Speaker 1: It would just keep coming up. The Smiley faced killers
17:23
Speaker 1: behind that eerie nickname was still a chilling question. If
17:27
Speaker 1: this was real, and if someone was really killing young
17:30
Speaker 1: men across the country and leading behind this cryptic grin,
17:34
Speaker 1: how had no one stopped them at this point or
17:37
Speaker 1: properly investigated them. Besides Gannon and Duart, we're just doing
17:41
Speaker 1: this as like something all they're off time, basically. So
17:44
Speaker 1: by the time Gannon's team began to speak publicly about
17:46
Speaker 1: the smiley Face killer theory, it had already ignited quite
17:50
Speaker 1: the controversy, and not because of what was known, but
17:53
Speaker 1: because of what was missing. Because the idea of a
17:55
Speaker 1: hidden network stalking and abducting young men across multiple states
17:59
Speaker 1: was it was pretty fucking bold because it challenged the
18:02
Speaker 1: very framework most law enforcement agencies used to us to
18:06
Speaker 1: understand violent crimes, and that made people very uneasy. Naturally,
18:12
Speaker 1: and in precincts, in college campuses and media circles, A
18:15
Speaker 1: quiet wave of skepticism began to ripple beneath the surface,
18:19
Speaker 1: because critics were just questioning the conclusion, they were questioning
18:23
Speaker 1: the very foundation of the theory itself. And one of
18:25
Speaker 1: the first criticisms was the symbol, the smiley face, because yes,
18:30
Speaker 1: smiley face graffiti had been found near some of the
18:32
Speaker 1: recovery sites, but it was also kind of everywhere else.
18:36
Speaker 1: I can't like that every time I've seen graffiti, there
18:39
Speaker 1: is a smiley face somewhere in there, and they're on
18:42
Speaker 1: bridges and underpasses, skate parks and alleyways where graffiti is
18:47
Speaker 1: very prominent to begin with, and urban graffiti wasn't a
18:50
Speaker 1: rare thing, and the smiley face, like I said before,
18:53
Speaker 1: was arguably the most universal symbol on earth, so to many,
18:57
Speaker 1: connecting it to the murders felt like seeing things in clouds.
19:01
Speaker 1: If you looked hard enough, you're gonna see it. Face
19:04
Speaker 1: might be a really scary face. I've seen some weird
19:06
Speaker 1: shit in clouds. I'll tell you what, But you'll see
19:09
Speaker 1: if you're looking for it. And there was the lack
19:11
Speaker 1: of heart evidence. There was no murder weapons, no fingerprints,
19:15
Speaker 1: no DNA, no witnesses, and no direct links between the
19:18
Speaker 1: victims themselves and each case when viewed in isolation could
19:22
Speaker 1: be explained away. It was a colleged age man, a
19:25
Speaker 1: night of drinking, a body in a river. Tragic, yes,
19:28
Speaker 1: but to most authorities, not suspicious. And the profiles, though,
19:33
Speaker 1: were consistent, but so were their environments college towns, winter weather, nightlife, culture, waterfronts, intoxication,
19:41
Speaker 1: And to skeptics, that wasn't conspiracy, that was just a risk.
19:45
Speaker 1: And even some within law enforcement began to question whether
19:48
Speaker 1: Gannon's team was chasing shadows at this point, because they
19:51
Speaker 1: saw the theory built on circumstantial links, bound together by
19:55
Speaker 1: grief and frustration and a deeply human desire to make
19:59
Speaker 1: sense of senseless death. Because to them, it wasn't murder,
20:03
Speaker 1: it wasn't ritual, it wasn't misinterpretation, It was just accidents.
20:08
Speaker 1: So even as the theory began to catch the public's eye,
20:11
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, it was already being quietly dismissed. But
20:15
Speaker 1: Gannon and his team were not backing down because for
20:18
Speaker 1: every case, critics explained away, but that's when another one surfaced.
20:27
Speaker 1: So Kevin Gannon and Anthony Dwart had spent years compiling
20:30
Speaker 1: case files, mapping location, and connecting the dots. No one
20:33
Speaker 1: else seemed to see because they really believed they had
20:36
Speaker 1: uncovered one of the most overlooked serial crime patterns in
20:39
Speaker 1: American history. But at this point, it wasn't enough to
20:42
Speaker 1: believe it, and they needed others to see it too,
20:45
Speaker 1: so they went national. Maybe the detectives would appear on
20:48
Speaker 1: ABC's Good Morning America laying out their investigation to a
20:52
Speaker 1: national live audience. Then their theory was featured on CNN,
20:56
Speaker 1: where Agaanon reiterated the most chilling possibility of all, we
21:00
Speaker 1: believe they're being murdered, and then Dwart added water destroys evidence.
21:05
Speaker 1: It's the perfect crime. But they didn't name any suspects
21:08
Speaker 1: at this point, and they didn't point fingers, but they
21:10
Speaker 1: posed a terrifying question to millions of viewers, what if
21:13
Speaker 1: these aren't accidents? And what if someone or some group
21:18
Speaker 1: is hunting young men across the country. And the media
21:20
Speaker 1: would take immediate notice and they would latch on to
21:23
Speaker 1: the Smiley face killers because it was eerie, it was marketable,
21:26
Speaker 1: it was viral, and that's when public opinions started to
21:29
Speaker 1: light up again. So true crime fans, amateur sluice, grieving
21:33
Speaker 1: families began to all re examine the old cases with
21:36
Speaker 1: fresh eyes. Was there a pattern that no one noticed?
21:40
Speaker 1: Was there a link between their loss and someone else's?
21:42
Speaker 1: And for many, Gannon and dwart had pulled back the
21:45
Speaker 1: curtain on a dark truth, but for others, they'd stepped
21:47
Speaker 1: into the spotlight with a story too far fetched to believe.
21:50
Speaker 1: So there are basically two parties. Either you believed it
21:53
Speaker 1: or you didn't. And as their theory started to make headlines,
21:57
Speaker 1: they also began to adopt some enemy and the detectives,
22:01
Speaker 1: being in this field for so long, had expected some critics,
22:04
Speaker 1: But what they didn't expect was how loud and how
22:06
Speaker 1: fast it would grow. Because the more the Gannon and
22:08
Speaker 1: Dwarf spoke, the more resistance they triggered from within the
22:12
Speaker 1: very world that they came from, which was law enforcement,
22:15
Speaker 1: forensic experts, and eventually the big guy, the big guy
22:18
Speaker 1: on campus, the FBI, and the FBI would push back
22:23
Speaker 1: and put out a statement and it would say.
22:25
Speaker 2: Over the past several years, law enforcement and FBI have
22:28
Speaker 2: received information about young colleged age men who were found
22:31
Speaker 2: deceased in rivers in the Midwest. The FBI has reviewed
22:34
Speaker 2: the information about the victims provided by two retired police
22:37
Speaker 2: detectives who have dubbed these incidents the Smiley Faced murders
22:40
Speaker 2: and interviewed an individual who provided information to the detectives. Today,
22:44
Speaker 2: we have not developed any evidence to support the links
22:47
Speaker 2: between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiate in the
22:50
Speaker 2: theory that these deaths are the work of a serial
22:52
Speaker 2: killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear
22:55
Speaker 2: to be alcohol related drownings. The FBI will continue to
22:58
Speaker 2: work with the local police in the affected areas to
23:01
Speaker 2: provide support as requested. And this was said supervisory especially
23:05
Speaker 2: Agent Richard J. Kolco, Washington, d C.
23:07
Speaker 1: So that was on April twenty ninth, two thousand and eight,
23:10
Speaker 1: and it was very rare for the FBI to put
23:13
Speaker 1: out public statements, but they would dismantle this case in
23:18
Speaker 1: just a few sentences. So it was swift and it
23:21
Speaker 1: cut directly through the heart of the smiley Face killer theory.
23:24
Speaker 1: So the bureau's position was pretty clear. There was no suspects,
23:27
Speaker 1: no motive, and no forensic evidence linking the cases. So
23:31
Speaker 1: to federal investigators, it wasn't a case. It was basically
23:35
Speaker 1: just a story and from their perspective, it just didn't
23:38
Speaker 1: hold up. Agannon, my guy was not convinced. Guy was
23:42
Speaker 1: persistent as hell, I will give him that, and he
23:44
Speaker 1: would actually fire back at the FBI publicly accusing the
23:49
Speaker 1: FBI of ignoring key inconsistencies in the cases, which included
23:53
Speaker 1: toxicology reports, signs of staging, unusual injuries, and bodies recovered
23:58
Speaker 1: in places that it already been searched, which we already
24:02
Speaker 1: knew and it was already pretty suspicious. Again, and believed
24:07
Speaker 1: that if the FBI actually sat down with them and
24:10
Speaker 1: actually looked at the evidence that they collected, they wouldn't
24:14
Speaker 1: have actually made that statement because to him, the Bureau
24:17
Speaker 1: hadn't disproven the theory at all. They basically just dismissed
24:20
Speaker 1: it without digging any deeper. But some of the loudest
24:22
Speaker 1: voices in opposition were the experts. It wasn't conspiracy theorists,
24:27
Speaker 1: it wasn't internet sleuths, but very seasoned criminal profilers, detectives,
24:32
Speaker 1: and forensic psychologists, many of whom have worked on serial cases.
24:37
Speaker 1: And doctor Chris Mohondi, a respected forensic psychologist who personally
24:41
Speaker 1: investigated the two thousand and two death of Christopher Jenkins,
24:44
Speaker 1: saw no evidence of foul play. He would point to
24:47
Speaker 1: inconsistencies in the graffiti as a key problem because the
24:50
Speaker 1: smiley faces varied widely in shape, size, and style. Some
24:54
Speaker 1: were cartoonish, others minimal, and some had been there for years.
24:58
Speaker 1: So to Chris, this wasn't a calling card. It was
25:01
Speaker 1: just urban noise. But raising my hand here, the smiley
25:05
Speaker 1: face might have nothing to do with it, and that
25:07
Speaker 1: that's like a very I think the smiley face part
25:09
Speaker 1: is actually a very small part of it. It's how
25:12
Speaker 1: similar these deaths are. That's just me though. But anyway,
25:15
Speaker 1: then we have Nanette Twesby, a former LAPD detective, who
25:20
Speaker 1: echoed those same concerns, and she would note that in
25:23
Speaker 1: many of the cases, the locations where the bodies were
25:25
Speaker 1: found and the locations of any graffiti were not close
25:28
Speaker 1: to each other. And she also argued that a serial
25:30
Speaker 1: killer spanning more than twenty seven years and state lines
25:34
Speaker 1: without any sort of trail seemed unlikely, which they didn't claim.
25:39
Speaker 1: They claimed that it wasn't one person. So okay, okay,
25:43
Speaker 1: in Nette, I'm being an asshole anyway. But then came
25:46
Speaker 1: Pat Brown, a veteran criminal profiler, and her take was
25:50
Speaker 1: even more blunt. She basically just called it Ludacris, like
25:55
Speaker 1: actually she used the word Ludacris luda and the smiley
25:58
Speaker 1: faces were just a herring. And she said, if you
26:01
Speaker 1: look in any area five miles square, I bet you
26:04
Speaker 1: could find a smiley face, which I agree. I do
26:08
Speaker 1: agree with that, like they're all really fixating on a
26:11
Speaker 1: smiley face thing. But I really don't think that's the point.
26:14
Speaker 1: I think there's just more than that that a lot
26:17
Speaker 1: of these deaths look like outplay. I think we should
26:20
Speaker 1: look into that. Stop looking at the fucking smiley face.
26:23
Speaker 1: But the Center for Homicide Research, a Minneapolis based organization
26:27
Speaker 1: focused on data driven crime studies, went one step further
26:31
Speaker 1: and they published a full length report aiming to scientifically
26:34
Speaker 1: refute the smiley face killing theory, and the argument included this,
26:39
Speaker 1: no proof that smiley faces were painted at or immediately
26:42
Speaker 1: after the time of killing. Graffiti is everywhere, thanks Center
26:45
Speaker 1: for Homicide Research. No discernible criteria has been stated for
26:49
Speaker 1: how close to smiley faces must be in proximity to
26:51
Speaker 1: the death site. No evidence of victim trauma. What the
26:54
Speaker 1: way that intoxicated men accidentally fall into bodies of water
26:58
Speaker 1: is well known and documented. Fair They concluded the theory
27:01
Speaker 1: most likely was a result of observational bias. You basically
27:05
Speaker 1: see what you want to see. There is fact in
27:09
Speaker 1: that I do think that personally, and they thought it
27:12
Speaker 1: was also a result of group think, basically, people influenced
27:15
Speaker 1: by an authority figure aka prominent lead homicide detective from
27:19
Speaker 1: New York, which has the largest city of population, and
27:21
Speaker 1: these posed a risk of distracting attention from the actual
27:25
Speaker 1: causes of death. But even local law enforcement had their
27:28
Speaker 1: doubts because in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, a city where eight separate
27:32
Speaker 1: cases were connected to the theory, police issued a very
27:35
Speaker 1: clear response The deaths were accidental drownings, there was no
27:39
Speaker 1: evidence of homicide, and there was no relevant smiley faced
27:43
Speaker 1: graffiti found near the site. So to them, it was
27:46
Speaker 1: a problem of alcohol, geography, and tragedy, not of conspiracy.
27:51
Speaker 1: So the message from experts was very clear. The theory
27:54
Speaker 1: supposedly wasn't supported by any evidence and was built basically
27:58
Speaker 1: just on shaky foundation. Were trying to connect dots that
28:01
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily connect at all. But for Gannon's team, persistent Guy,
28:06
Speaker 1: it wasn't about what the experts believed. It was about
28:09
Speaker 1: what was happening, and they were determined to uncover more
28:12
Speaker 1: evidence because long after criticism came and went, the bodies
28:17
Speaker 1: were still showing up. So Dakota was twenty three years old.
28:25
Speaker 1: He was a graduate student of du Kesnie University with
28:28
Speaker 1: a promising future. He was very bright and very responsible
28:32
Speaker 1: and not the kind of person who just vanishes without
28:35
Speaker 1: a trace, and who vanishes with no reason. But on
28:38
Speaker 1: January twenty fifth, twenty seventeen, Dakota went out with friends
28:42
Speaker 1: in downtown Pittsburgh and it was just a casual night out,
28:45
Speaker 1: just drinks after a very normal day, nothing unusual for him.
28:49
Speaker 1: But surveillance footage later showed him walking alone through Kat's
28:53
Speaker 1: Plaza and then down a nearby alley toward Fort d
28:57
Speaker 1: Kesney Boulevard, and that would be the last time he
29:00
Speaker 1: was seen alive. And for forty days, Dakota was just
29:04
Speaker 1: missing and the family would just beg the public for
29:07
Speaker 1: information and the searches would intensify, and then he would
29:10
Speaker 1: finally be found. So on March six, his body was
29:13
Speaker 1: surfaced in the Ohio River near Interstate seventy nine bridge
29:16
Speaker 1: over Neville Island, just miles away from where he was
29:20
Speaker 1: last seen, and the Alleghany County Medical Examiner ruled it
29:23
Speaker 1: in accidental drowning. There was no trauma, no foul play suspected,
29:27
Speaker 1: and the case was just closed. But Dakota's family did
29:30
Speaker 1: not accept that, especially his mother, Pamela James, because she
29:34
Speaker 1: believed that there was no way he ended up in
29:37
Speaker 1: the river on his own. And that's when doctor Sewell Weckt,
29:41
Speaker 1: a renowned forensic psychologist, would enter and he would go
29:44
Speaker 1: on to review Dakota's case, and he would find it deeply,
29:48
Speaker 1: deeply troubling, and he would make these notes minimal decomposition
29:52
Speaker 1: inconsistent with traveling over ten miles and forty days in
29:56
Speaker 1: a river, supposedly through a dam, as well ligature marks
30:00
Speaker 1: around the neck suggesting possible strangulation not mentioned in the
30:04
Speaker 1: autopsy at all, and the distinct difference in coloration of
30:08
Speaker 1: the fingernail beds of the fourth and fifth fingers on
30:11
Speaker 1: both the right and left hands, which certainly would be
30:14
Speaker 1: consistent with someone reaching up and trying to release the
30:18
Speaker 1: pressure from a ligature that is being applied around the neck.
30:22
Speaker 1: So to Wect, this wasn't just drowning. It looked more
30:25
Speaker 1: like a staged crime scene. But the police just stood
30:29
Speaker 1: by their ruling. There was no suspects, no evidence of abduction,
30:32
Speaker 1: and no witnesses, which of course just means he wasn't
30:35
Speaker 1: murdered just because you haven't found anything yet, They're like, ah,
30:38
Speaker 1: I was an accident. We can't find anything. You look,
30:40
Speaker 1: Let me look, let me look really quick, one secon Now,
30:44
Speaker 1: case closed. It was an accident. Let's go get lunch.
30:48
Speaker 2: Like.
30:48
Speaker 1: The amount of neglect in these cases is just so sad,
30:54
Speaker 1: so disheartening, especially for these families just wanting answers as
30:57
Speaker 1: to why their child, their brother, their their uncle, whoever
31:03
Speaker 1: went missing, it just turned up dead, and they're just
31:06
Speaker 1: being pushed aside. It's disgusting. And obviously to Dakota's family,
31:09
Speaker 1: this was not a tragic accident. They believed it was
31:13
Speaker 1: something else, something much darker, And for those who had
31:16
Speaker 1: been following the Smiley Face killer theory for years, the
31:19
Speaker 1: details felt hauntingly familiar. So Gannon once again woul as
31:23
Speaker 1: simple his team it's like the Avengers, I love it,
31:26
Speaker 1: including former members Anthony Dwart and a doctor, Lee Gilbertson,
31:30
Speaker 1: but this time they added a fellow retired NYPD detective,
31:33
Speaker 1: Michael Donovan, so with fresh eyes and newer tools. The
31:36
Speaker 1: team brought something to the table that most local departments lacked,
31:39
Speaker 1: which was advanced forensic methods, digital reconstruction, and geographic profiling.
31:45
Speaker 1: Because to them, this wasn't about just chasing hunches. It
31:47
Speaker 1: was about following the data and letting digital trail speak
31:50
Speaker 1: for itself. And in several cases they conducted detail reviews
31:54
Speaker 1: of cell phone records, GPS logs, and account activity and
31:57
Speaker 1: these discoveries would form a foundation for a brand new
32:00
Speaker 1: light to be shone on the smiley face killer theory.
32:03
Speaker 1: But more on that in a moment. So in the
32:06
Speaker 1: early days, the symbol was simple, a smiley face screwed
32:10
Speaker 1: cartoonish and sprayed onto bridges, tunnels, walls, and river ranks.
32:13
Speaker 1: Into some it was just graffiti, but to others it
32:16
Speaker 1: was a signature. But as the cases mounted, the investigators
32:19
Speaker 1: began to notice something unsettling, and that was the symbol
32:22
Speaker 1: was evolving, because the smiley face kind of shifted from
32:25
Speaker 1: concrete to code, and they begun to theorize that the
32:28
Speaker 1: symbol was no longer limited to paint cans and underpasses.
32:32
Speaker 1: It had become something more abstract, a digital marker passed
32:35
Speaker 1: through usernames, avatars and encrypted online communities, and it was
32:39
Speaker 1: a way of signaling identity or allegiance. And then they
32:43
Speaker 1: would find something that changed everything because during the course
32:46
Speaker 1: of reinvestigation, the team was handed a URL and the
32:50
Speaker 1: URL had led them not to the surface web, but
32:53
Speaker 1: to something far more concealed, a dark web portal. Yep,
32:58
Speaker 1: we're getting real dark. And the site was not public,
33:01
Speaker 1: so this couldn't be accessed by accident, and before granting entry,
33:06
Speaker 1: it demanded something unexpected, which was webcam verification, and to
33:10
Speaker 1: proceed they would need to show their faces, which again
33:13
Speaker 1: is just just terrifying, and this was a step that
33:16
Speaker 1: no investigator could afford to take, so they would back off.
33:20
Speaker 1: But what lay beyond that login screen has haunted them
33:23
Speaker 1: ever since, and from that moment on, the Gilbertson Networks
33:26
Speaker 1: theory felt much stronger. But this dark web portal helped
33:31
Speaker 1: paint a picture. It was decentralized, anonymous operating in cells
33:35
Speaker 1: across various cities, and each cell, they believed, composed of
33:40
Speaker 1: dozens of individuals capable of recruiting, surveilling, and communicating without
33:45
Speaker 1: leaving a trail at all. And if true, it would
33:48
Speaker 1: explain the uniformity of the victims and the precision of
33:52
Speaker 1: the disappearances, and the near total absence of forensic evidence.
33:56
Speaker 1: So the recruitment they theorized occurred through in did communication.
34:01
Speaker 1: So these weren't just thrill kills, they were coordinated acts.
34:05
Speaker 1: According to gannon As team and the Smiley Face it
34:08
Speaker 1: wasn't just to taunt anymore. It was a banner. And
34:11
Speaker 1: to critics this all just sounded like folklore, digital age mythmaking,
34:16
Speaker 1: wrapped in fear. But to Gannon's team it made sense
34:19
Speaker 1: of what nothing else could explain. How could the same
34:22
Speaker 1: kind of victim disappear under the same circumstances in city
34:26
Speaker 1: after city, year after year, without a single suspect ever
34:30
Speaker 1: being caught, even though foul play was present in some
34:33
Speaker 1: of the murders. So if the killings were coordinated behind
34:36
Speaker 1: the screen, then maybe the face on the wall wasn't
34:39
Speaker 1: just a signature. Maybe it was just watching you back. So,
34:47
Speaker 1: though the cases were live and well with Gannon and
34:51
Speaker 1: his team and of course the victims' families, the Smiley
34:54
Speaker 1: Face killer theory had lost a bit of steam over
34:56
Speaker 1: the years, and critics said that it had been debunked
34:59
Speaker 1: and the media. He had just moved on like they
35:01
Speaker 1: always do, so the case has just remained cold. But
35:04
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, the theory returned, and this time it
35:08
Speaker 1: was through a television screen because remember that brand new
35:11
Speaker 1: light that I mentioned. This was it because the Oxygen
35:14
Speaker 1: Network launched a six part true crime docuseriies called Smiley
35:18
Speaker 1: Faced Killers The Hunt for Justice, and it followed Kevin
35:22
Speaker 1: Gannon and Anthony Dwart and their investigation team as they
35:25
Speaker 1: reopened some of the most controversial cases connected to the theory.
35:29
Speaker 1: And this series wasn't just a recap, it was an
35:31
Speaker 1: extension of the investigation updated for the digital age, and
35:35
Speaker 1: each episode dove into different cases, revisiting timelines, interviewing families
35:41
Speaker 1: and challenging the official rulings and in some cases revealing
35:44
Speaker 1: new details the public had never heard. And in the
35:47
Speaker 1: case of William Hurley, the Navy veteran who vanished after
35:50
Speaker 1: the Boston Bruins game, they would examine his damaged cell
35:53
Speaker 1: phone that was recovered near where he was last seen
35:56
Speaker 1: because they suspected that the phone had actually been intentionally
35:59
Speaker 1: destroyed just based on the way that the phone was damaged,
36:03
Speaker 1: and this was potentially to disrupt digital evidence collection. And
36:06
Speaker 1: then came the case of Dakota James because, in addition
36:09
Speaker 1: to forensic red flags raised by doctor Cyril Wect, including
36:13
Speaker 1: the minimal decomposition and possible ligature marks, the investigation team
36:17
Speaker 1: uncovered something very odd in Dakota's digital footprint and it
36:21
Speaker 1: was a PayPal transaction made two days after his disappearance.
36:26
Speaker 1: So again and in his team, it suggested a chilling
36:29
Speaker 1: possibility that someone maybe had access to Dakota's accounts after
36:34
Speaker 1: he had vanished, and if this was true, he may
36:36
Speaker 1: have not been alone during that time. And in the
36:38
Speaker 1: case of Todd Geeb who disappeared after the bonfire party
36:42
Speaker 1: in rural Michigan in two thousand and five and was
36:44
Speaker 1: found three weeks later upright in the lake, the team
36:47
Speaker 1: actually went a step further and they would conduct a
36:50
Speaker 1: forensic decomposition study, working with forensic biologist to doctor m
36:54
Speaker 1: Eric Benbo. They would use a pig carcass to replicate
36:58
Speaker 1: the environment conditions of the lake. workI was found and
37:01
Speaker 1: the results bodies left in the water for three weeks
37:04
Speaker 1: showed immediate insect infestation and extensive decomposition, which was far
37:11
Speaker 1: more than what was seen in Gheeb's case, and to
37:13
Speaker 1: the investigators this was very significant. It not only suggested
37:17
Speaker 1: Todd had not been in the lake for the full
37:19
Speaker 1: duration of his disappearance, but that someone may have held
37:23
Speaker 1: him elsewhere, and then the body was placed in the
37:25
Speaker 1: water after the fact. So these weren't just one offs.
37:29
Speaker 1: They were signposts evidence that supported what they had believed
37:33
Speaker 1: for years. And these young men weren't just falling into rivers,
37:36
Speaker 1: they were being put there. So for some the Oxygen
37:39
Speaker 1: series breathed new life into the old myth, but for
37:42
Speaker 1: others it served as a reminder for something far more
37:44
Speaker 1: disturbing that after two decades, no one could fully explain
37:49
Speaker 1: why so many men were disappearing, only to be found
37:53
Speaker 1: in water miles from where they were last seen. But
37:55
Speaker 1: this time the audience watching wasn't just investigators, it was
37:59
Speaker 1: millions and millions of viewers and the next wave of believers.
38:04
Speaker 1: So in the modern era, the rules for investigation have changed,
38:07
Speaker 1: and the technology that once didn't exist now might just
38:11
Speaker 1: crack the silence. And today investigators aren't limited to witness
38:14
Speaker 1: statements and physical evidence. They have data and machines that
38:18
Speaker 1: know where we've been and what we've seen and who
38:20
Speaker 1: we were near because geofencing now allows authorities to pinpoint
38:24
Speaker 1: every phone in a certain radius at any given time,
38:27
Speaker 1: which is kind of scary but also helpful in this case,
38:30
Speaker 1: and Wi Fi logs can place victim or suspect inside
38:33
Speaker 1: a building without a single camera, and phone ping triangulation
38:36
Speaker 1: can quite literally rebuild the final minutes of life with
38:40
Speaker 1: chilling accuracy. So these tools aren't just theoretical. They've already
38:44
Speaker 1: been used in major criminal cases to secure convictions, and
38:47
Speaker 1: if applied to the drownings linked to the smiley faced
38:50
Speaker 1: killing theory, they could finally reveal what happened between the
38:53
Speaker 1: time a victim vanished and where their body was found.
38:56
Speaker 1: So the next breakthrough, if it comes, may not be
38:59
Speaker 1: found a bottom of a river, but buried in data.
39:02
Speaker 1: And for the families left behind, the answers from law
39:05
Speaker 1: enforcement were never enough, and for some the search for
39:07
Speaker 1: truth never stopped. Like Pam James, the mother of Dakota James,
39:11
Speaker 1: has become one of the most outspoken advocates for reopening
39:15
Speaker 1: the cases because she never accepted that her son died
39:18
Speaker 1: of accidental drowning, and even what the aforementioned evidence discovered
39:21
Speaker 1: by Gannon and doctor Weckt, including the potential ligature marks
39:25
Speaker 1: on his neck and minimal decomposition, and despite being missing
39:28
Speaker 1: for forty days, the Alleghany County Medical Examiner's Office refused
39:33
Speaker 1: to change the ruling. But still Pam continues to speak
39:36
Speaker 1: out demanding that her son's case be reopened. And she
39:40
Speaker 1: is not alone. The home and family, the Hurly family,
39:43
Speaker 1: and more they lost their sons under nearly identical circumstances,
39:47
Speaker 1: and they continued to call for the cases to be
39:50
Speaker 1: formally re examined because for these families, the pain of
39:53
Speaker 1: losing a child had not been compounded by the feeling
39:56
Speaker 1: that no one but them wanted to look deeper. But
39:58
Speaker 1: with Gannon and his team, they looked and what they
40:01
Speaker 1: found wasn't closure. It was contradiction, and the kind of
40:05
Speaker 1: contradictions that don't lead to peace, but just to more questions.
40:09
Speaker 1: So by now dozens of cases have been reviewed, autopsy reports,
40:13
Speaker 1: GPS data, surveillance footage, and digital footprints analyzed again, then again,
40:17
Speaker 1: some theories unraveled, some theories refuted, and some leaves just
40:21
Speaker 1: went cold. But even after that, some patterns refused to
40:25
Speaker 1: go away, and victim after victim followed the same haunting
40:28
Speaker 1: sequence college stage man, intelligent, athotic, and well liked disappearance
40:32
Speaker 1: late at night, often after leaving a bar or party,
40:36
Speaker 1: and they were found days or weeks later in a
40:38
Speaker 1: body of water, with no sign of robbery, no sign
40:40
Speaker 1: of essay, and no motive. And in many cases the
40:43
Speaker 1: victim's phone was missing or later found damaged. And then
40:46
Speaker 1: there were the geographical coincidences as well. Many of the
40:49
Speaker 1: victims were found in or near major river systems, always
40:52
Speaker 1: in proximity to nightlife, but far enough away that their
40:55
Speaker 1: last known locations raised questions, and somebodies were recovered up
41:00
Speaker 1: stream and others and areas that had already been searched,
41:03
Speaker 1: and a few showed rigor mortis or minimal decomposition, inconsistent
41:07
Speaker 1: with the official timelines. So these weren't drug dealings gone wrong,
41:11
Speaker 1: they weren't robberies, they weren't hate crimes. Nothing was taken,
41:15
Speaker 1: nothing was left behind, and often there was no obvious
41:18
Speaker 1: reason the victim had left where they were in the
41:21
Speaker 1: first place. So why does this keep happening? But here
41:24
Speaker 1: is what the believers say. The victims fit a profile
41:28
Speaker 1: too specific to be random. They always turn up in
41:30
Speaker 1: the same way in water days or weeks later, sometimes
41:33
Speaker 1: miles from where they were last seen. The condition in
41:35
Speaker 1: which the bodies are found are questionable. They're found in
41:39
Speaker 1: better condition than they should be, they have strangulation marks
41:43
Speaker 1: or burning marks in the defy typical drowning behavior, and
41:46
Speaker 1: while the official causes of death are usually listed as accidental,
41:50
Speaker 1: many private pathologists like doctor Cyril Wect, have raised concerns
41:54
Speaker 1: about potential signs of strangulation, post mortem, water entry, and
41:58
Speaker 1: other red flags overlooked in the initial autopsies. And believers
42:02
Speaker 1: point to the smiley faced graffiti as a kind of
42:05
Speaker 1: ritualistic signature, although not always identical, but often close enough
42:09
Speaker 1: to raise eyebrows, and if you step back far enough,
42:11
Speaker 1: you'll also notice something chilling. These deaths aren't localized. They
42:15
Speaker 1: cover multiple states, following major water routes and appearing in
42:20
Speaker 1: clusters near college towns, and to believers, this isn't sloppy
42:24
Speaker 1: work by a serial killer. It's a network, one that's
42:27
Speaker 1: possibly been active for over two decades and perhaps operating
42:31
Speaker 1: in independent cells, as Gannon and Gilbertson had theorized capable
42:35
Speaker 1: of using digital footprints, recruiting new members and communicating without
42:39
Speaker 1: ever being caught, and each drowning isn't just a mistake,
42:42
Speaker 1: it's a message, and the smiley face was just a
42:45
Speaker 1: symbol that says we were here. And then we move
42:48
Speaker 1: on to the skeptics few So while believers say that
42:50
Speaker 1: the theory connects dots between unexplained deaths, the skeptics say
42:54
Speaker 1: the smiley face killer theory isn't a chilling discovery at all.
42:57
Speaker 1: It's just a dangerous distraction that just started with a symbol.
43:00
Speaker 1: The smiley face the theory namesake is one of the
43:03
Speaker 1: most common pieces of graffiti in the world. You'll find
43:05
Speaker 1: it under bridges and sidewalks and inside bathroom stalls, and
43:08
Speaker 1: the presence of a smiley face near a crime scene
43:10
Speaker 1: is statistically meaningless. There was also no consistent style, no
43:13
Speaker 1: matching handwriting, and often no photographic proof that it was
43:17
Speaker 1: even there in the first place. And then there's the
43:19
Speaker 1: victim profile. Yes, most of the men were young, white
43:22
Speaker 1: and athletic, but so are millions of college aged men
43:24
Speaker 1: across the country. So skeptics argue this as a survivorship bias,
43:29
Speaker 1: which is basically the human tendency to notice patterns that
43:32
Speaker 1: match our expectations while ignoring the ones that don't. And
43:36
Speaker 1: when you start with the conclusion that these men were murdered,
43:39
Speaker 1: it's easy to retrofit the evidence to support it. And
43:42
Speaker 1: the geography critics note that nearly all the cases occurred
43:45
Speaker 1: in college towns and cities, within rivers and nightlife places
43:49
Speaker 1: where alcohol consumption is high and environmental hazards are very real,
43:53
Speaker 1: and the combination of drinking, cold weather, poor lighting, and
43:55
Speaker 1: water is already statistically very dangerous. And to them, the
43:59
Speaker 1: pattern is conspiracy. It's just a tragic probability. And the
44:03
Speaker 1: list goes on and on. Stuff I've already gone over.
44:06
Speaker 1: But they argue that clinging to conspiracy theories can distract
44:11
Speaker 1: from the real dangers like substance of mental health struggles
44:14
Speaker 1: and unsafe environments, and by replacing those hard conversations with
44:18
Speaker 1: a villain we can't see. Because sometimes the scariest answer
44:22
Speaker 1: isn't that someone is responsible, it's that no one is.
44:26
Speaker 1: So whether you believe the Smiley Face killer or not,
44:30
Speaker 1: one thing is undeniable, and that is that the story
44:33
Speaker 1: leaves a mark not just on the families and not
44:36
Speaker 1: just on the investigators, but on all of us. Because
44:38
Speaker 1: what we're dealing with isn't just death, its disappearance, uncertainty,
44:43
Speaker 1: and a narrative where the ending is never quite satisfying
44:46
Speaker 1: and the facts just never align fully. And for the
44:49
Speaker 1: families and the victims, the psychological toll is compounded by
44:53
Speaker 1: more than just grief. They're mourning sons, brothers, partners, and friends.
44:57
Speaker 1: And while fighting institutions, confront doubt and navigating public speculation.
45:02
Speaker 1: Many were told to just move on, to accept the ruling,
45:05
Speaker 1: to let it go. But how do you let go
45:07
Speaker 1: when the final chapter doesn't make any sense? How do
45:11
Speaker 1: you grieve when every detail feels just a bit off
45:15
Speaker 1: and enough to haunt you? And for law enforcement, the
45:17
Speaker 1: toll comes in a form of pressure. They fear of
45:20
Speaker 1: missing something bigger, or chasing the wrong theory, or of
45:23
Speaker 1: being accused of apathy. And for some officers the cases
45:26
Speaker 1: remain open wounds, and for others just statistics in a
45:30
Speaker 1: filing cabinet. And for the public, it's a lingering chill
45:33
Speaker 1: that comes with every new headline, every new name, every
45:36
Speaker 1: young man who disappears without any sort of explanation. And
45:39
Speaker 1: then there's the Internet, a place where tragedy becomes theory
45:43
Speaker 1: and theory becomes obsession, and in the digital age, true
45:46
Speaker 1: crime isn't just a genre. It's a community, a conversation,
45:50
Speaker 1: and sometimes a battle ground. On one side, people are
45:53
Speaker 1: desperate for justice, and on the other skeptics demand proof.
45:57
Speaker 1: And in the middle there's real lives and real families
46:01
Speaker 1: and real consequences and conspiracy theories by nature fill the
46:05
Speaker 1: void left by uncertainty. So when the truth feels incomplete,
46:09
Speaker 1: our minds kind of just do the rest. Sometimes we
46:11
Speaker 1: find clarity and other times we find comfort and pattern
46:15
Speaker 1: set aren't really there potentially, But for those who have
46:17
Speaker 1: actually lost somebody, the ambiguity is the real punishment, because
46:21
Speaker 1: when a death is ruled accidental but everything about it
46:25
Speaker 1: feels deliberate, you don't just mourn the person you lost,
46:28
Speaker 1: you mourn the answers you'll never get. But for me,
46:32
Speaker 1: there's just a certain silence in these cases, a stillness
46:36
Speaker 1: that just doesn't feel right. And for every official report
46:39
Speaker 1: that says accidental drowning, there's a grieving family and a
46:43
Speaker 1: set of missing phone records or a toxicology screen that
46:46
Speaker 1: raises more question than it does answers. So I hope
46:49
Speaker 1: that technology can finally break this silence because the families
46:53
Speaker 1: deserve that. But I personally do share that just gut
46:57
Speaker 1: feeling by those investigators and parents and every friend that
47:02
Speaker 1: says that wasn't like him because if it's all a coincidence,
47:07
Speaker 1: why does it feel so intentional? But I will leave
47:10
Speaker 1: that question to you. I'm very interested to see what
47:13
Speaker 1: you guys think about this case. I know it was
47:15
Speaker 1: a long one, but it's extremely interesting and I know
47:18
Speaker 1: a lot of you recommended this. Thank you for recommending it.
47:21
Speaker 1: I'm happy to bring new light to this case. I
47:23
Speaker 1: think it's really important. Let me know what other cases
47:25
Speaker 1: you want me to go into down below, and until then,
47:28
Speaker 1: stay safe and I will see a beautiful face in
47:30
Speaker 1: the next video. Okay, bye,