If you're a writer and you wanted to come up with the most terrifying concept of a serial killer, it might be someone operating without a clear motive. Targeting victims across the country in various jurisdictions. Or what about a group of killers working together, caught and waiting attacks that leave little to no evidence of their violent crimes?
Both of those concepts are part of the provocative theory known as the Smiley Face Killers, a.k.a. the Smiley Face Murders, which connects dozens, if not hundreds, of strange deaths together, alleging that all the victims were targets of a killer or a group of killers that have yet to be cut. This is a study of strange. Welcome back to the show. I'm Michael Main. Returning from our previous episode is Bridget Weitzel. Hi, Bridget. Hello, Michael.
How are you? I'm good. And thank you for coming back. I wanted to tie these two together, so I'm so glad you were willing to do this. I was super stoked you asked. This is fun. I love it. So thank you. Yeah. So today we're talking about the smiley face killers theory that has been floating around the halls and rooms of true crime for over a decade now. It's a very provocative theory, so I think it was worthy to learn more and to explore this. What's so interesting about it is there's no suspect.
There's just this broad idea that there's a killer or killers attacking people. Very similar to Todd Guy, who we talked about in the last episode. So before we dive into this, Brigida, do you have any other thoughts or questions or anything about the Smiley Face killers or. Todd Gabe I don't you know, I think I kind of did this on the last one, too. Like so many of these things are like in the ether, right? Like you've heard little things about them.
But there's so much information out there that you can kind of either choose to go down the rabbit hole and research them or just stumble upon things. And when you brought both of these to me, I had heard of smiley face killers specifically, but I didn't know a lot of detail. Yeah. And I kind of decided just not to go down that rabbit hole because I wanted to. I wanted to learn about it here. And yeah, like I said, it's in the ether. People have heard of it, People know about it.
But I don't know how many details and how much information people really have. So it's not even the fact there is a movie that was inspired by this theory. I think it's called Smiley Face Killer. Smiley Bret Easton Ellis. Bret Easton Ellis wrote it. Yeah. And it's not like I ended up not watching the whole thing, is it actually has really nothing to do. It was just the idea of it was just a launching point for an idea for this movie. It doesn't really like go in to the theory in depth.
What I was thinking about doing today is sharing the basis for the theory, where it came from, what it is, and then some of the cases, because there are potentially hundreds of cases that people link into this theory. And when I say cases, I mean people that murder potentially murders or drownings or drownings slash murders that tie into it. So I'm just going to cover kind of the some of the main ones that were in the original book written by the detectives that stumbled across this idea.
First, I want to read a quote from a report that the Center for Homicide Research put together, which the take of this report is that the smiley face killer theory is not real. It's so it is it has its own conclusions built into it. It is still great research for this topic. And they have a quote in there that I love throughout history. Society is always needed to produce monsters, often cold folk devils. To help explain the unexplainable death investigation.
Is one area inherently in great need of public explanation, but often lacking in available credible knowledge. And yes, I'll just leave it at that. I just thought that that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's like devils and like urban legends. I mean, people thrive on those, right? And then as they start, they just grow and evolve and all of a sudden this tiny little story might just blow up into this big beast of a legend that everybody knows.
And this is how it was. And that's definitely not the case. And and the difference which is talked about in a lot of the research I've looked at, but the difference between normal folk devils, which I love that term or legends or any of that, is that these are real victims. It's not like, my grandfather tells the story of this guy who died in the cemetery, but it's like you can never pinpoint who that really was. And if that really happened, were this these are real victims.
Right. And that's the difference with this one. That is part of the intrigue of the theory. So on our last episode, we went over the strange case of Todd Guy who had drowned. It was deemed an accidental drowning. There were strange circumstances surrounding it. His family thinks more happened that there is foul play involved. So do some of the detectives, and they want the case kind of reopened and explored more.
And then at the end of that, I tied Todd Gabe into the smiley face killers because some people lump his case in with this theory as well. So for my listeners out there, I don't want to go over the Todd Gabe case again, so please go back to that episode. If you have a listen to it. I do think it will help you with this one. And I do want to share one thing that happened after we post that episode. Todd's mom commented on the episode Stop it. Yes.
And the only thing she added is that or at least at this point, the only thing she's added is that she says or alleges that someone tried to pick a fight with Todd at that party in the apple orchard, and she suspects it was to distract him from someone drugging him or putting something in a drink or I'm sort of extrapolating from him. And and that's kind of the key piece of information there, because I think I said in the episode, there's rumors of a fight. And some people say Todd was involved.
Some people say there wasn't a fight. Some people say a fight happened later. And I'm getting the details of that. But she alleges that that somebody was trying to distract him by picking a fight to drug him. So I'd be interested to know what leads her to that conclusion. I mean, again, you know, as far as the fight goes, again, not rehashing the last episode, but there was no physical evidence of that on the body or really backing up that correct true facts. I'd be interested to know.
Yeah. Yeah. And she obviously knows more about this than we will. So. Yeah, yeah. I found I was really appreciative to see that comment and that was really fascinating. Yeah, it is. So the reason I bring up Todd, given that it's lumped together, is that it turns out that there are many other cases with similar circumstances. It involves young college age white men, just like Todd found drowned under strange circumstances.
And typically after drinking the night before, just like Todd Guy, a lot of them leave a bar or a party and say, Hey, I'm going to walk home, and then they disappear for a while and they're found drowned. Now, a few detectives noticed similarities with some of these cases, and initially it was around 40 of them that kind of started them diving into this theory. And here I'm going to give you a little bit of the history of it. That's a lot for me. Like in during what amount of time?
like a decade or more. So it's not like all within six months or a year or whatever, like, but still 40 within ten years. That's a lot. Yeah. So the theory of the Smiley face killer is that all of these men were killed by a singular serial killer or a connected group of killings. And now just this is going to do a much better job of me explaining it.
I want to read from the Center for Homicide Research in their report, because they do a nice job of summarizing a theory has developed that credits the drowning deaths of a number of young men in the Midwest and Northeastern United States to the work of a serial homicide offender. In 1999, journalist first reported that college age students were drowning in rivers after an evening of heavy drinking.
These deaths were said to form a pattern, and it was soon proposed that it was the work of a serial killer or team of killers who were deliberately targeting young men for murder.
Smiley face graffiti was sometimes, though not always discovered near these deaths since this serial murder explanation is now called the smiley face murder theory, central to the claim of serial homicide offending is the alleged linkage of victims by the discovery of painted graffiti proximal to the location of the victim.
The theory of these deaths includes offenders drugging a victim with GHB or similar drugs, abducting the victim, driving the victim around for hours in a van truck, torturing them, and then slipping the body into the water. Detectives allege the motive for the dumping of remains into the water is to wash away evidence. I'm uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. I think that's why this theory is so. I say provocative, like it really gets your imagination going.
It can either strike fear in you or strike. No, that sounds stupid. Like it? Definitely just provokes a reaction in the AFL. The idea that there's a serial killer going around. What's interesting about these, there's not really a motive. There's a type of victim, but outside of that there's really no motive that's been deduced within this. And that's terrifying.
That's really scary because you like to think I mean, all the, you know, unsolved crimes that you follow and all the things that happen, eventually, they trace it back to a reason, the connection between the victim and the perpetrator. But this just sounds like this big, wide open, 40 suspicious deaths. I mean, that's that's huge and makes you very uncomfortable.
Yeah. And at the same time, too, I can see why it's intriguing for and I'll talk about who's behind this theory in a second, but the detectives that kind of started to formulate this idea, you have these strange deaths and I'll just reference Todd Guy because we've gone over his his case, but he was found floating, oddly, that they can never really describe. There's it looks like his body didn't decompose in the correct manner for how long he was missing and how long. Yeah, so many things.
Water and there's all these strange things and the fact that there's other cases very similar to that were just like odd drowning victims. Even if there is no smiley face killer or killers. That's still fascinating. Really weird. Creepy and weird. Yeah. So this theory has spread with amateur and professional investigators. They often everybody that gets involved often attaches their own drowning cases that they've come across that they think could be plausibly part of this.
And the vast majority of professionals, however, consider this theory to be busted. They call it more of an urban legend. And like I mentioned earlier, unlike other urban legends, this has real victims and real families that just want answers to why a loved one died where they feel like the answers aren't being brought up or investigated thoroughly and they just want these things to be investigated more completely. And and that's what's kind of important about these stories.
And spoiler alert, I do want to say this up top, because the case is so well known, there aren't actually smiley faces found near or at all of the scenes. And that's interesting. Yeah, I think I read it was somewhere around 20 of the original cases that were looked at had smiley faces nearby. And so that's just something to be considered off.
Also, there's this word I have I'm still a little confused about where this has shown up, but you also read about this word in graffiti sometimes found nearby. And I I'm not going to say this correctly, but the word is sense and never which is less you. Thank you. Which is a I believe it's a it's a Native American word. And I think it means rattlesnake and it has been found nearby as well. So some people attach that to this to this theory as well.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. Yes, please. Yes, it is interesting. Like you said, there's been so many different investigations and investigators that are all they all have some sort of unsolved case and you're trying to connect it to something and find some sort of throughline somewhere to lead you to an answer. So all of a sudden you've got smiley face killers.
But this matches but there was no smiley face and then this, you know, I can see how it can blow up into a big story. It does make a great name, though. Yeah, because there's a reason it caught on. That name is very powerful. Marketing is very important aspects of things. Yeah. So how did this thing start? I feel like I should have started the whole episode with this series. But here's my format. It's been a little wonky today. So what is this theory? How did it start?
It first came to public attention in 2008, and it's two retired New York detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte. They started kind of connecting the dots with these cases and started doing their own investigation into what they could be. And I think Kevin Gannon is the one that really started it. Before Duarte got involved. He was a an investigator.
I don't remember his exact rank at the time, but in the late nineties he worked in New York and there was a case that this all sort of starts with in 1997 with a Patrick McNeil and now Patrick McNeil disappeared on February 16th, 1997 in New York City. He was a 21 year old Fordham University student, and he was last seen leaving a bar in Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he had been drinking with friends. And despite heavy snow that evening, he left the bar alone and was walking home.
Some witnesses report seeing him outside, looking intoxicated, looking very drunk. Some reports also claim that there was a car following him when he left and he never returned home. Now, the initial response afterwards is that this disappearance prompted a search by family and friends and law enforcement, as you would expect it would do.
And despite these efforts, there was no there were no clues and nothing was really found until two months later, on April 7th, 1997, in the waters off Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in New York Harbor, a body that was in an advanced state of decomposition was found, but there were no obvious signs of physical trauma. And that made it difficult to ascertain a cause of death. And I believe the official ruling from the New York City medical examiner's office was death as an accidental drowning.
And the determination was based on autopsy reports. But it was still kind of kind of hard to really get specific with it from from what I've been able to deduce and the theory that Kevin Gannon came up with and even when he started working on these cases later with Anthony Duarte, is that they believe this was not an accident. And they point to several factors that are inconsistent with accidental drowning. The location where his body was found is a big one of those. It was really far away.
And I saw an interview with Gannon where he talked about he research like the currents and stuff of the rivers. I was going to ask. Yeah. And he was saying that his it was way too far away for for him going in the river nearby where he was last seen. He would never have ended up in that position. So he suspects that he was taken somewhere and dumped later.
They also say that the body showed signs of ligature marks on his neck, though that is that is not confirmed just to be very, very upfront about things. And they also noticed what could be charring on parts of his bodies and parts of bodies of his body. And again, there's this report of a figure kind of following him or a car following him that some people said it's never been substantiated, but that is, you know, a witness account.
And so, yeah, the theory is that MacNeill was stalked, followed, abducted, then killed and dumped in the water farther away. And. Yeah, yeah. And they they do say that smiley face graffiti was found near the site where McNeill's body was discovered. And that is kind of the hallmark, the thing that kind of instigated this, at least calling it the smiley face killers or smiley face killer theory. And that was the started of all.
I've also read that Gannon was like moved by this case and he never felt satisfied with this drowning. So he told the family he's like, I'm going to keep looking into this. And that's part of how it it kind of led to him discovering other bodies of similar nature and other cases because he apparently wanted to formally solve McNeil's death.
So geographically, the other cases that get brought into this, I mean, it starts with this one that's in the Upper East Side, I think you said of New York geographically, why is he finding all the other victims in cases in the same kind of area? What kind of you know, So it broadens a covering here. Yeah, it broadens out. And and I apologize because I didn't really go methodically in in order of cases. I just kind of looked at a big lump sum of the ones that I think are the most interesting.
However, in general, generally speaking, what he's finding is the Northeast and Midwest, and that's when they kind of I think over the first ten years or so that they're like putting this together and looking at things. That's kind of the focus. It does. It has since then, it's grown people that believe this theory now adding other cases from all over the country, if not internationally, but as it starts, it's mainly the Northeast in the Midwest.
And I should mention here, and we skipped down on my notes to find it, but Duarte and Gannon ended up also working with a doctor, Lee Gilbertson, who's a criminal justice professor and gang expert. He was some of that didn't believe in the theory at first, and then he started actually he came around, it started to believe it. They've also worked with a detective named Devin.
We looked this up, Mike Donovan, who's another detective that's been kind of helping the investigation along the way, and Dr. Gilbertson, I believe Dr. Gilbertson helped write the initial kind of book that they use to to talk about this, which was about deaths and drowning. And I believe Gilbertson is based in the Midwest, and that might be why a lot of the cases they ended up finding like like Todd Gabe, maybe because Gilbertson is based in the Midwest and maybe that was his focus.
So again, generally speaking, Northeast and Midwest, that was a very long winded way to answer your question. You know, that's fascinating. I mean, it's all just so interesting and it's interesting how you start with one case and then all of a sudden you start realizing, well, this was not connected in any way, shape or form. But now that you're looking at it with different eyes and it's different, you know, way of exploring, you start to find similarities across the board. Absolutely.
And speaking of the similarities, I'll go into a handful of other cases that are put into this. And these are not in order of of date. They're not in order of anything except just who I put down first or last. So I will mention dates and times that so we can at least mentally kind of know how these are happening. The first I'll share is Chris Jenkins, and this is in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 31st, Halloween. I didn't even think about that when I was writing my notes.
All right. Yeah. On 2002. So Chris Jenkins is a 21 year old University of Minnesota student. He disappeared after leaving a downtown Minneapolis bar. Four months later. His body was found in the Mississippi River, still wearing I did write down Halloween costumes. So there you go. It was initially ruled an accidental drowning like like all these others. And the Minneapolis Police Department later reclassified his death as a homicide in 2006.
But no suspects have been named. No one has ever been caught. And there's still a lot of questions around the face around the case. A smiley face was allegedly found near where his body was discovered. I'm just always going to say allegedly because it's so hard to actually fair. Like, where was this? Like, there's always a smiley face found and it's like, where what did it look where it was going out. Yeah, in 2006, there's apparently an informant in prison that said that Jenkins was murdered.
And I can't find a lot of information about that. But that is an interesting comment there. Fascinating. Yes. Yes. But no reasoning as to why or who or what or And is it presumed, based on your research, that the reason it was changed from accidental to homicide was based on that informant? I don't think it's because of the informant. I could be wrong about that. So please, listeners, if you know right to me a study of stranger at gmail.com, let me know. I don't know why they reopened it.
I honestly just assumed and assuming is not great, I should have done more looking into it. But I assumed it's because like all the other bodies, it's not super clear that he died by drowning. And if he didn't die by drowning, then what happened? And I think there's probably pressure on the authorities, like all the other cases where family and friends and people are like, Come on, like you got to look into this man, or at least stop saying it's closed. Like there's questions around this.
And so I think that's that may be why it happened, but I don't know for sure. I think any kind of case like this, any kind of murder, that's not very you know, you can't trace exactly who it was. There's always going to be questions and it's always going to seem like, well, if you don't have an answer, don't close it. Keep exactly trying, keep seeing what shows up, even sometimes decades later. So that makes sense. And the next case I'll talk about is Dakota James.
And this one is more I think this is the most recent kind of main smiley face killer or quote unquote victim. And Dakota James was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and this happened on January 25th, 2017. Dakota. James was 23 year old. He was a student, a graduate student at Duquesne University. And he disappeared while walking home from a night out with friends in downtown Pittsburgh. His body was found in the Ohio River six weeks later, or about six weeks later.
And there's a I found this kind of terrifying. But there are there are some photos online of him from CCTV or security cameras like stills of him leaving. And he's just alone, like looking at his cell phone. And there's something that really hit me about that, because it's like that would be if I was leaving a bar at night to I'd just be looking at my phone and walking alone and it's like has no idea what's about to happen to Absolute. And it's really sad.
Yeah. The Allegheny County Commission medical examiner's office ruled his death accidental drowning, and Gannon and Dougherty were kind of got involved with this case very early on, from what I can tell. And they suggested foul play, citing inconsistencies in the autopsy, finding surveillance footage and they claim they also found a smiley face graffiti in the area.
There's a theory from locals that he was drunk and he went down to the river to pee and that's how he died as he fell into the river. I don't know. I don't even think I said that he was found in the river. But they suspect he, you know, drunk, fallen in the river and as you and I have discussed in the previous episode, that does happen. That does happen quite a lot.
So they are kind of valid in theorizing that, however, Gannon thinks that the body had ligature marks and there were questions about the decomposition of his body, just like guys where it didn't look like he had been in the water for nearly seven weeks. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I also came across this story and I don't know how real it is, but I came across a story that about five weeks before he disappeared, he had called his girlfriend and he was stumbling out of a hotel
or his room or dorm, whatever. And she, like, saw him walk. I'm doing a terrible job explaining this, but she likes him stumbling and she yelled for him to to come back to her. And he like didn't hear and he was walking towards a van or an SUV and she didn't know whose it was. And then she got his attention and he turned to kind of left the SUV alone. And the SUV sped off and went away. It's just kind of like a weird a weird story. And I don't know how much again, I don't know if it's real.
I don't know what to think about it. But it is an interesting story. Well, if you were writing that in a script, that would be, you know, the foreshadowing for what's going to go sideways. It's like, who is that? What do they have on him? Why do they want him? Yeah, presumably, I would assume again, this would be a full time job for you at this point, researching all of this stuff. But like, what is the background with each of these victims? Do they have beef with somebody?
Do they have, you know, things going sideways in their personal life? The professional life? What's so what's the history with these people? Yeah, and it's just for the sake of this episode. I didn't dive into that. But other people have and so has Gannon and Duarte, and have looked into that. And and again, just because it's the best example we have. But Todd Gabe's like whole thing looking at him, did he have enemies who would want to fight him at a party? And exactly.
They dove into all of that. So I do think they have done that. And for the most part, these are all well-liked individuals there. And they're they don't really have enemies. They tend to be athletic and friendly and outgoing and hanging out with friends. So they're tensions high and active and. Right, right now, they also have said that there's a bridge. I think it's the Roberto Clemente Bridge that I know that bridge.
Yeah. So the there's talk that there's 11 smiley face graffiti on that bridge and bridge anymore now. Right. Right. Okay. It's super creepy. And that's where he could have fallen off the bridge and into the water or dumped, you know, depending on what you think about this. What is really interesting about the Dakota James case is that apparently there were credit card transactions two days after he disappeared. And so that is that is intriguing. That is intriguing.
And in 2017, you would assume I mean, we can't get away from cameras, right? Everything we do, you can be seen somewhere doing something. Yeah. So it's like if he was out and about or his cell phone records or something. It's 2017. It should be easy to get some sort of bearing on where he is or was at the time. Absolutely. And you would honestly that's a that's a it's a brilliant point. I would assume they've looked into that and especially if they have those credit card transactions.
So they must not have seen anybody. And it may not be like an ATM who will take it right face if he's if it's a credit card transaction and like a 7-Eleven or whatever, maybe the security cameras, we're looking into the corner where you can't see who it is. You know, like there's it's yeah, I wish we had answers. Obviously. One one other thing about this case, too, that Kevin Gannon brought up is where the body was found and where he would have had to go into the river.
He would have gone over a dam and the body didn't show those kind of disturbances or marks or bruises or cuts or anything that would have happened if a body had gone over this dam. And so that would be trauma. Right. Thank you. So the idea is, again, he didn't fall in where people say he fell and he was dumped later down, you know, further down the river where he wouldn't have had to go over the dam like people suspect he would have if he had fallen it.
Or to be fair, if he's drunk and wandering, kind of like we talked about in the last episode, you can get turned around backwards. And that's true. Going in the wrong direction. So, yeah, perhaps he went down to the river to pee or do whatever and ended up just kind of wandering in the wrong direction and fell in somewhere else. Yeah, it's the lack of decomposition after however many weeks of in theory, being in the, the river, that is the most bizarre. Yeah. Yeah, indeed.
And also it's that connective tissue to all these other cases where that tends to be the the through line for some of these. So the next case I'll briefly go over the next few here. So there's a Tommy Booth who disappeared on January 19th, 2008 in Woodland, Pennsylvania, or Wood Line. I think it's woodland. Woodland. And Tommy Booth was 24 years old. He was last seen at Bootleggers Bar where he was attending a friend's party. Two weeks later, his body was found behind the same bar in a creek.
And what's important to note here is the creek was frozen, so they didn't find the body until the creek somewhat melted enough, kind of like a body was seen. Which brings up so many questions to me in this one. So I honestly wasn't going to include this case in it because he was found right behind the bar where he disappeared. Yeah, and that's different than the other cases in my mind because it's like, what was he killed just right there? Like, that doesn't fit what all this stuff is.
And also two more questions is if the river's frozen, how did he get underneath the ice? Did it freeze like. Yeah, there's a lot of questions I have about this case. However, how it ties into all this is it was ruled an accidental drowning and there are obviously some bizarre circumstances to this. We've already asked some questions about it. And also there's a smiley face, graffiti found. It's like on the back wall of the bar or like underneath the deck. It's something like right there.
There's one of these smiley face graffiti which are super scary. The next case, Brian Wells in and Chicago, Illinois. This is on January 1st, 2000, Y2K baby. After celebrating New Year's Eve with friends in Chicago, Brian was a 21 year old college student and he went missing. His body was found 77 days later along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. In Indiana, the official cause of death was undetermined, but there's speculation of drowning.
Similar to Todd Gabe's case, there was little to no water in his lungs. Which brings up the first question of why are you if doesn't sound like drowning? Yeah, that's kind of just for the sake of time here. I'll move on. But it's just, again, these interesting circumstances of drowning, but no water, that kind of thing. Yeah. And there's two more I'll get to real quick. First, it's Lucas Harmon from La Crosse, Wisconsin. This is in September of 2006.
He's a 21 year old college student who disappeared after a night out with friends. And Herman was an athlete in great shape, and his body was found in the river two days later and local authorities ruled it accidental and apparently, according to witnesses and tested autopsies and all that, he was very drunk, but there were there was no drugs found in his system and they did test for it.
I'm going to talk about that a little bit later on, because there is a lot of this theory is a lot of these people were drugged. There are no drugs found in a man's system. But what's interesting to me about this story and the reason I included it, the difference in this case is that another student was charged with obstruction in the investigation and they ended up not charging him with anything. But what he did is he gave conflicting accounts of what happened that night.
He had told police that Herman had gotten into a fight with another person at the bar and then fled. And then he was talking to friends and other students and said that he was punched like Herman was punched by a guy. And there were three men involved. And that's whenever this guy was being questioned. He was super nervous around the police. So he had these conflicting stories. And yeah, I couldn't find much more about that. But it is interesting to note that there is somebody with information
that is saying different things to different. Absolutely. And, you know, we've only gone through a couple of cases and a couple little details, but every other case has been weeks before the victim was found in. This guy was two days, you said. Yeah. So. Yeah, yeah. So that's interesting to me as well. Yes. All right. And the last one I wanted to mention is a guy named William Hurley or Will Hurley. He's 24 years old and he vanished from a Bruins game in Boston, Mass.
And he had left the stadium halfway through the match to match. He had called his fiancee for a ride when she arrived at wherever they had planned to pick up, he wasn't there and she started asking around if anybody had seen him and someone said, he went to blah, blah, blah, and like gave her a destination. She went there. He wasn't there. Six days later, he was found in the Charles River near the stadium. It was considered an undetermined drowning. There was no blunt force trauma. sorry.
There was blunt force trauma that to his head. Now they don't know if that's because he fell and hit his head or someone attacked him. And the reason I wanted to mention Hurley's story even briefly, like, is because he had GHB in his system and it was above which I'll talk about this in a little bit of the GHB kind of talk around these cases. It was above normal natural levels. I didn't even know we had GHB. Yeah, actually. And in fact, I'll dive into that now.
So the big part of the Smiley face killers is that a lot of these victims had GHB or something similar in their system. Todd Guy There was the antidepressants. Other people, they claim had GHB. What I found out is that everybody develops a certain amount of that after death. Whoa. Did I did you put a thumbs up on my screen? I did not. But that happened earlier, too. It really I thought it was coming from a text that was weird. That's crazy. Where's that coming from? Who's doing that?
I think it's Ghost. Bridget. We found Ghost in our podcast. Ladies and gentlemen. They are leaving us emojis. I swear to God, if a smiley face pops up on the screen, I'm logging off immediately. Sorry. It's over. Absolutely. my God. Now I wish I've recorded video just for that one moment. That was weird. I was. I thought that was a text. I was. No, but that's in our thing. That is in our thing. That is so weird. WTF, Michael? Wow. Wow. So, all right, well, besides that.
So GHB is found naturally in our bodies where it stands out in the will. Hurley case, however, is that it was above the natural amount that you would find. Why it's interesting to note that is when you hear that GHB is found in people's systems in these cases, that doesn't necessarily mean that they were drugged. So just I just want everybody to know that because when I read about this case, I never hear that. I just hear drugged and it's like, yeah, well, where are they, though?
Like how much of it was in their system? But it seems like an important thing to indicate. Absolutely. I have a question. Yeah, please. Okay. So this is all based on, you know, the the name, the smiley faces, because so many of them have a smiley face somewhere. Yeah, this is just dumb. Maybe this is a dumb thing to say, but, like, does the smiley face look the same? Because smiley face is a very common thing.
You scribble it on pieces of paper, you put it on, you know, the fog on your car window or whatever. Is there something specific about the smiley faces that are found that ties them together? So you're tying you're teeing up where skepticism comes across in this theory. And I'm going to go ahead and have you read something particularly deals with this smiley face. So if you got my email, let me look here we go to read. I'll start at the top. Okay. There is a problem of time. Order in science.
We have to show that the two correlated factors occur in the correct sequence. Smiley faced graffiti must be proven to have been painted at or immediately after the time of killing some of the photographs of the graffiti show faded, worn out paint that looks to have been applied years earlier. In other cases, the graffiti was found months afterwards in, many instances no smiley face was found at all. Therefore, the finding of these faces is most likely the result of chance.
Smiley faces were first invented in 1964. That's fascinating, right? Yeah, I love that so much. First invented in 1964 and has since spread everywhere or they exist anywhere from children's stickers to commercial logos. One reason this graffiti is found everywhere is that smiley faces are among the easiest forms of graffiti to paint. That's fascinating. Yeah. And you can keep. Is there more? There's more. Yeah. Yeah. You saw that? None of the smiley faces exactly matched one another.
There is no common paint, stroke, height, width, curl, whip or drip. This makes it difficult to connect one incident to the next in the process of what investigators call linkage. Also, no criteria has been established specifying the necessary distance that a smiley face must occur in proximity to a deceased body in order to be counted, in some cases. The smiley word since Wah.
Scuse me if I said that wrong skin cinema is within close proximity and with others it is quite distant estimating where the body might have entered the body Water is simply that an estimation, even when based on experimental testing, there are too many constantly changing variables to ensure accuracy. That's what I was wondering. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of skepticism about this overall theory.
We've already talked about some of it, but the smiley face, one ism is a big one, at least in terms of like where it got its name and how you're connecting these cases together, where it's like there's not a smiley face at every one of these. Right. And and if there is, there's no commonality between how far away it is. There's no commonality between what they look like, how they're made when they were made. And you can find smiley faces pretty much anywhere with graffiti.
So pretty much anywhere. And a lot of these people are the victims are being found in, you know, not the most public places. So behind bars, under bridges, you know, where people generally go to do graffiti and spray paint. So absolutely. Yeah. And I also I think I mentioned this. I did. Yeah. Since anywhere is a word that means rattlesnake and you can actually find that in a lot of graffiti around the Midwest, specifically Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois.
And so it's not necessarily specific to these cases either. It's kind of like the smiley face where you just see it around a lot. It's just in that region. It's in that region. Also, it's worth mentioning that homicidal drowning is extremely rare. It's only point 2/10 of 1% of all U.S. killings are homicidal drownings, and they tend to be highly because it's like parents drowning kids or siblings or that kind of stuff. It's a lot more personal. Yeah, there's also I did read this.
I can't remember if it's in that same report, and I will have a link to that report that I'm getting a lot of this information from. But there's something I read either in that or somewhere else, which is that you can't rely on like trauma or marks on your body from victims found in water.
It's actually not very conclusive because so much can happen to skin and rotten bugs and falling and so a lot of times when they say there's ligature marks on a neck, I do think people that are skeptical of this can say like, well, that doesn't prove anything, though because the body was in the water for for a while. Yeah. So those are some of the main criticisms of this theory. There's also the fact that there's really no motive.
There is this commonality with like white college age males, and that could be part of a motive where it's like, hey, let's, you know, the people that have most of the, you know, parents helping them with money and they get more opportunities and everybody else maybe will target those guys. But outside of that, there's not really a motive for that.
And that's a it makes it tough to investigate the be it also people that are skeptical of this are like well killings don't just happen without motivation. Like you got to have motivation. So that could could kind of point away from a killer or groups of killers. And the commonalities, honestly, when you really look at it, they they seem very small. Yeah. It's like, yes, this person was drunk and was found in a body of water. Is that I mean, that's a very, very thin thread, right?
I mean, there's a few things here and there you can see both sides, but I don't know. This one, to me kind of feels like there are so many cases that can't be proven, like maybe there's one or two little questions. And as a family member, I would want all of those questions to be answered and cleared up. Right. Like you want to be able to to to know completely what happened. And I think that's just not the case sometimes.
So it's easier as a society and as people with questions to tie it into a bigger question. Right. And put it into this, like you said, this urban legend thing where maybe it is bigger than just what we were thinking. Yeah. And we want we like that quote says like, we want monsters. We want answers to why are these innocent people dying? And sometimes it's helpful to think that there's a reason behind it besides just an accident, you know?
So I think that's a big part of this this urban legend of this. And I do buy into that. I'm personally of the opinion that this is not a thing. Yeah. And there are people that are very much believers in it, and I think that's totally fine.
And sure, the main reason is I think we need to investigate a lot of these deaths more, not the hundreds of them that are potentially linked to all this, maybe not all of them, but like, say like, like Todd guy, like I think that case needs to be investigated more thoroughly. And and so I think that's where the importance of this story comes in, which is like, let's highlight some of these cases that probably need more answers and see if see if investigators can actually find them. I agree.
I think that makes complete sense. I mean, any time there's any questions and it could be something different, I think it's worthy of putting the more the time and effort into investigating more deeply. You know, did indeed. That's kind of it. I mean, that is the smiley face killer theory. Do you have any other questions about any of these or comments like I have any questions. I think I want to hear about a few more of the cases because it did become so broad and so wide and so many.
There's got to be more things that connect. You know, I'm always okay here. Yeah. You know, just based on what we're looking at, it doesn't seem like a thing to me. But these detect these the gentlemen working the case whose names have escaped my screen, they're clearly good at their jobs. They're educated. They do this a living, and there's something in there that's making them think that there's a reason that, yes, it's connected. Absolutely.
And, you know, that's one of the kind of the downside of doing an episode like this where I just kind of briefly go over this instead of doing a deep dive, because I also I just kind of have to research it that way. If I did a deep dive on each and every one of them, we would never I would never get on to other episodes I need to do this year. But but yes, there are smart people behind this.
Even if I disagree and I don't think there is a face killer or organization or person or whatever, I do think the detectives behind it, they seem very legitimate. I've really enjoyed a lot of the interviews I've seen with Kevin Gannon's specifically. He just sounds very much like a New York detective.
You know, I love listening to Jeff, but he doesn't come off as a kook or a weirdo or someone trying to sell books like he legitimately, I think, believes this and has a very good investigative mind. And I want to watch more of his stuff. I very, very honestly do. And honestly, that kind of is what makes a good detective. I would think in some ways, too. Like he's looking at something that can be debunked, but maybe not. So he's giving it credibility until he can prove that it's not absolute.
Clearly, with all of his information, hasn't been able to prove that it's not yet. Yeah, you know, like I did say, I think there is something to be said about where we are as a society, where, you know, marketing is a thing, you know, And it's not like they're trying to market the smiley face killer, but it's catchy. It's a good name, you know?
And if people can wrap their head around it easily, if you say there was smiley face graffiti nearby, look, you're picturing in your head some sort of image in all the cases, right? Yeah. What we just read was that it was not the same. I have something in my mind that just makes sense and I can picture it under the bridge and near the canoe for Todd Guy and everything. Yeah. And it just. It feeds into our imagination as well. And it just is, quite frankly, kind of frickin terrifying.
That could even be a possibility. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's why I wanted to learn more about this, because it's scary. It's very, very scary to think about. Yeah. When I first read, I don't remember when I first read about the Smiley Face killer theory, but it had to be about ten years ago. And I just remember immediately going, like, what word? Wait on. There could be like this mass serial killer or killers that are like talking to each other and like, wow.
And they're getting rid of evidence and, my God. Like it's you're, you know, white, college educated dude that went to school and that would hit home for you because you fit the mold of the victims as well, right? Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for bringing that up. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, that's great. Bridget, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this again. This is a fascinating story. And listeners, I always want to learn more.
So please, if you want to correct me, if you want to add to this, email me a study of strange at gmail.com I would really appreciate it. And yeah, Bridget, anything from you, any anything you want to plug here before we go, I wish I got to come up with something good, because you asked me that every time and I'm like, I don't know, I'm doing my thing, organize my cupboards, you know? Yeah, it's important work now. And no, I don't want to just go. Thanks, Bridget. And then hang up.
You know, I want to know, like. Like, offer or anything. So. Yeah, yeah. So I will say this though, like for all your listeners, I am I have a pretty extensive library of, you know, true crime mafia and stuff like that. I'm super interested. And so at any point, if anybody has anything that they think that I should know or I should have trusted in, let me know. I'm on Instagram and, you know, queen be on the move and yeah, maybe I'll get to come back and be on a study of Strange another time.
I'd love it. I'd love it. I love that you're willing and I love it. Yeah. Thank you. Well, great. I will talk to you soon. All right. Well, thank you for listening to a study of strange and a special thank you again to Bridget Weitzel. She was on the show probably about a year ago. And one of my favorite episodes, one of my favorite topics that I've research, which was 19th century serial killers. Check that out. It's a great episode.
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