Thinking Sideways: The Smiley Face Murders

weird eyes at both of you. And it's October, so we're still in our Thinking Sideways Most Wanted and this week we had a tie. You may or may not notice that the it's Tuesday today, not a normal week, and actually usually on Tuesday's when we release episodes, they're what we call shorts. They're usually about half hour long. I have no idea how long this episode is going

to be, probably longer than a normal short. But there will be another one which will also be shorter than a longer episode, shorter than a longer than a normal episode. Um that will come out this Thursday later. I'm sure many of you are waiting with bated breath, but we had to tie this week, so for the second most requested, the first runner up, runners up, the first runners up. Yeah,

alrights America. Okay, so we one of the two stories we're going to talk about, but tonight we're going to talk about the Smiley Face murderers or the alleged Smiley Face murderers, or the Smiley Face killer theory. Okay, any other names? Okay. So two thousand eight, two retired New York police detectives went public with a theory that they've

been developing um for years, almost a decade. Yeah. Basically, this theory was that, since nine young white athletic men from areas ranging as far from New York to Minnesota had died from drowning, and according to Frank Gannon and Anthony Duarte they're too retired New York detectives that I referenced earlier, these men had all actually been murdered by a mass serial killer dubbed the Smiley Face Murderer or the Smiley Face Killer due to the fact that smiley

faces had been painted near where the bodies had allegedly entered the water. Yeah, allegedly. Yeah, I'm gonna try real hard to keep allegedly and apparently and reportedly out of this episode. I'm gonna try not to let my bias seep in too hard and just uh it is so, but I apologize in advance if that seeps in a little bit. Okay, here's the facts as presented by the

detectives to support their theory. Almost all of the victims were white, college aged males who were described as athletic, very good looking, and academically successful to me, yeah, obviously, um, And actually this caused them to theorize that the murderer was in fact jealous of them, so he would have been ugly, ostracized and dumb. So yeah, so the opposite of you. Wait, The victims were all seen at local parties or bars getting drunk prior to me, making them

susceptible victims. Almost all of the victims were found in freezing winter months in northern States and no longer me and at least a dozen of the murders, meaning about that n of the cases. Um. A painted smiley face was found quote unquote near the place that detectives estimated the young men had entered the water, and near is never best, nobody ever says. Within this amount of radius. It's all just like near And then how how did

they tie the other of the cam? Because they fit the description of the typical victim as in they were white college age males described as athletic, good looking, and academically successful, and they drowned and drunk in a bar horror party. So sure, Um, there's an article actually I found which I think we're going to put on the website in the UM actually by the Homicide Research Center

called quote drowning the Smiley Faced murder theory. It was great, Yeah, and I'm just going to quote from it of their described m O from what they could tell from what the detectives were saying. Quote. Central to the claim of serial homicide offending is the alleged linkage of victims by the discovery of painted graffiti proc symbol to the location of the victim. As many as twenty two smiley faces have been identified by investigators, as well as an occasional

discovery of the word sinnes seua. That's hard sincecinema investigators interpret graffiti as taunting of the police. The theory of these deaths include offenders drugging the victims with GHB or a similar drug, abducting the victim, driving the victim around for hours in a van or truck, torturing them, and then slipping the body into the water. Detectives alleged that the motive for the dumping of the remains into the

water is to wash away evidence. In the Jenkins case, a correctional inmate is said to have confused confessed guilt of the killing to a cellmate. A general assertion has been made that all of the identified victims are male, and finally, that people don't fall into the water by accident. Of course, not never happens fishman. Yeah. Also, I'll just mentioned quickly before we get too far into this that, um, some of these victims died on the same nights in

totally different states. Like some of the victims, yeah, um, like or sorry of the forty five victims thousands of miles apart, which led the detectives to believe that maybe instead of being one serial killer, it was like a gang of serial killers the network that all went out on the same night. Your mission tonight, should you accepted?

A group of guys who you know, were had decided that this was the kind of endeavor they were going to undertake and the opportunity struck for you know, both of them on the same night, Not that it was like planned that it would be like tonight twenty of you were going to go out. It was a couple of them. The way I under the way I read interpreted that was that they were an organized group that that tried to do it on at the same time.

I gotta be honest with you, The sense that I got about when describing this group was like some dudes on four Chan. Yeah, you know, it was that it was just an anonymous group or whatever. But how many is so? No more than two people were killed on the same night then, not as far as I could tell. And granted, the number of actual victims ranges quite drastically depending on what source you site, so it's hard to

decide who falls into this category and who doesn't. I was going to ask you about that, because when I was doing the research, I found a lot of sites that there were things where it would purport that this if you link to this site, it's got a list of the victims, and it's got all mapped up. And nine and a half out of ten times that site didn't exist anymore. And so there was there was no list of all these victims that were always referenced and the list of the victim is from but you could

never actually find the list. So yeah, that was my big struggle with this story, bringing into just dead end. Yeah, yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about that later. Did you get a copy of these guys books and they probably have a list in there? You know? I didn't because the cheapest one I could find was like thirty bucks? Are you kidding me? Everywhere I said, it was like a hundred and thirty bucks And if you wanted, you know, some places will let you rent books or e checkout

books for a fee. The cheapest I ever saw it available to rent was sixty bucks. I saw it to rent for like thirty but yeah, not no, why expensive because he's buying it five copies couper costs, I don't know. So of these forty five victims or suspected victims, only two of them have officially been ruled murders or in suspicious deaths. The rest of them officially are accidental drownings. So we'll talk about these two murders in a little detail.

Too specific ones, these two specific ones that people generally agree are at least suspicious. One of them, nobody disagrees was a murder. Another one of them, well, let's talk about that first one. But we don't know if it was a murder or not. It's a boy by the

name boy, a young man by the name of Patrick McNeill. He, as far as any as far as I can tell and as as far as the Internet law goes, was the kind of spearhead case gannon, one of the kind of the biggest proponent detective of this theory of this the serial killer theory. He he worked on this case as a as a police officer. Yes, so it was when he was still serving, and it kind of stuck

with him, all right. So Patrick McNeil, after a night of bar hopping with friends a quote incredibly drunk, unquote, Patrick told his friends that he was tired and he had an early class, so he was going to take the subway back to campus. He was a student at Fordham University, which is in New York. In New York. Yeah, actually yeah. One of his female friends said that she was also ready to go, but as I can attest, as a lady, had to go to the bathroom first.

It's hard when you're drunk, you know, you break the seal. Oh yeah, yeah, you guys have been drinking with me. I'm being Yeah. So she went to the bathroom, and you know, she said, wait here, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. She went to the bathroom, she came back, he was gone. Yeah. It was February six, as we said, in New York City. Ten days later, more than six people showed up to volunteer to help look for him, because you know, he had been reported missing. By this point.

Police had searched hospital, soup kitchens and even um Rikers Island jail for him. By this point, you know, kind of all of the things that you would do, and more than ten thousand flyers had been hung all around New York City and all the way up to Young curs Uh. And then it wasn't until April seven that his body was finally found floating twelve miles downriver from where he had last been seen. I used the term just twelve miles. Most of the internet says a startling

twelve miles. But after a couple of all the medical examiner said that he had a quote moderate amount of alcohol in his blood stream, in fact, actually the exact quote was more than a little and less than a lot of alcohol in his blood stream. Um and during that time. The New York medical examiners don't release exact blood alcohol numbers. I'm going to use that next time they get asked how much I've had to drink? Well,

officer quote medical left than a lot. You know. The cop pulls me over and he asked me that I just go a lot so much? Why you're a little jealous job Sorry, yeah, geez. Patrick had, according to the original report, had no broken bones, no head trauma, and no physical injuries. His cause of death death was left undetermined, though they specified accidental undetermined. He was in good shape, apparently not as drunk as people had indicated, according to

the medical examler. The medical examiner he had uh so nobody knows how he wound up in the river. And according to the original report, he had been in the water since he was disappeared, so it wasn't a later body dump. So it wasn't like a month later somebody pitched him into the river or something crazy like, according to the original report. Will continue to specify. According to the original report, who actually did find the original New York Times article online and read it, and this is

all consistent with the original reporting. It's repeated over and over again throughout a lot of the literature. I'm presuming that his trip to the subway station didn't take him over any bodies of water, like to Let the River. As a note, the owner of the last bar that he was in that he left drunk paid um dred dollars in fines for serving what we in the industry called a visibly intoxicated person, under allegations that Patrick had actually fallen down in the bathroom he was so drunk

and continued to get served. It's hard, but it's hard to know he so he was. He was twenty actually when he disappeared. He was actually a week away from his twenty first birthday, and so it's hard to know. At that age, you kind of presume he was an athlete. He'd probably been drinking a lot for you know, since he was a kid, since he was sixteen. He could probably handle his liquor. But it's also possible that that's not the case. It's possible that he hadn't ever really

been drinking. And you know, when you first start drinking, you don't have to have that high of a blood alcohol content for it to like affect you because you don't know what's you're not prepared well and and you've got her. I don't know if you too remember this, but I remember this vividly, is that as suddenly able to go to the bar kind of guy you drink when you can't go to the bar, and so you have drinks and you you don't have a whole bunch

of rapid succession. There's something about when you're first in the bar. Shot shot, shot, let's have shots, and so you down, you know, a bunch of booze really fast and it'll knock you on on your seat in no time flat. Or you're drinking things that have hidden the alcohol, you know, or there are a lot of different ways that a lower blood alcohol content can actually make you

act and feel drunker than your blood alcohol content. Totally depends on what he was drinking, and you know, he was tired or like what you know, and he did drown though right since he fell in the bathroom. I wonder if you know, the girl goes off to go to the bathroom, he decides, what the hell I should go to the bathroom too for a climb on the subway, and he passes out and winds up with his head of the toilet and he drowns, and then the bartender

finds him there. Well, it was undetermined, so it actually I'm actually joking. Yeah, no, I know, but that is that is a good point to reiterate that the medical examiner couldn't determine that he drowned, just that he was he had water in his lungs, but it wasn't it wasn't provable that that's what killed. Yes, all right, that all out of the way. A Gannon, I guess was a police officer. I couldn't ever quite get a handle on if he was just like a beat cop or

if he was an investigator. He was a detective at the time. Yeah, that was the impression I had to But it was earlier in his career. He's not a particularly old guy. He's still around now. Not that seven was that long ago, but that was almost twenty years ago, in case anybody needs to feel really old. I think he was a coup for like fifteen or twenty years something like that. Yeah, no, no, I mean so he

it was earlier in his career. Certainly he wrote a report about this case trying to get it reclassified as a homicide, and I've read the report. I think we'll probably link that one too. That will be one of the links that we put up for this because it's actually good to read his report. Apparently the investigators on the case, and because it was an unresolved case, this

this kind of makes sense. They didn't release the full autopsy package, which means, you know, all of the the reports and all the pictures and all of that stuff, until two thousand nine for the public and two thousand eight to the family. And it was about a month after the package was released that Gannon put forth this this theory of the serial killer. So here's some additional stuff that Gannon says that he discovered about this case.

Apparently based on the water currents of the easter. Ever, when Patrick was found, his body shouldn't have been where it was found. The allegation is that he would have had to have been abducted and dropped into the river at that point in order for him to have ended up there at all. I will know the East River for those of you that do not know, is was and still is an active shipping lane, so there's lots

of big ships that go back and forth. I understand the theory of currents, but I also feel like that stuff gets disrupted sometimes by giant ships coming in and out the current. The current does go down stream, I don't know. Yeah, a witness apparently reported seeing a car falling Patrick that night. I that's literally the only information they were able to give, like a partial plate number that never went anywhere. I don't put a lot of stock into that. Patrick was found in just his genes

underwear in socks. This caused the investigators to state that it's hard to believe that he would have stripped the rest of his clothing off and jumped in the river because Patrick had less been seen wearing a like a plaid button up shirt, jeans, and some brown boots. I never saw mention of a jacket, despite the fact that

it was like fagrees in February, three degrees fahrenheit. Thing think about it is, is it really makes me wonder is if he had his socks on, but he took his boots off and he was and he didn't tend to go swimming. Unlikely, but right, right, So if he took his boots off. Why didn't he take his socks off too? Yeah, that seems I agree. I agree, And you know, as I said, there's there's certainly some weird

stuff about this case. I'm not going to refute that there are some things that will so we're going through this and we can go back and kind of, you know, pick it apart. But there's some weird stuff about it. But there's also a lot of stuff that just seems like you're grasping at straws. Yeah, yeah, no. Uh. The blood alcohol level, the actual number UM in Patrick's system, was actually eventually released to be point one six, which

is twice the legal limit in America. And we do know that bodies do produce alcohol as they decomposed, so apparently the investigators were able to figure out based on the time that he was dead and blah blah blah blah, that blood alcohol level was likely more like point one two, which it would have been six strinks over the course of an hour. UM six strengths in an hour. That's pretty good. It's not bad. It's pretty true. I mean to be fair, like point oway feels pretty tipsy. Twice

that feels pretty drunk. And I'm an experienced drinker, So yeah, for a twenty one year old, it's I don't know. The other part of this is Patrick he was He had been an athlete in in high school. He was six ft tall and a hundred and nine pounds, So the investigators say that he couldn't possibly have been acting as drunk as he was reported unless there was something else in play, like a drug of some sort. Patrick was also found on his back, which in drowning cases

is incredibly rare, particularly for someone of his physique. If you have, um, a bunch of fat on your front, yeah, a lot of you know, fat has a tendency to float, so that'll flip you over if you're like really overweight or a beast or anything like that. Um, but he was obviously not, so apparently that's a big thing. Additionally, the way that the blood settled in his body, the lividity, apparently indicated that he had died on his front and been on his front for the first at least eight hours.

It takes eight hours, it's my understanding. It takes eight hours for a lividity to sit in, set in. But once it's set in, it's done. Pretty much. The blood has settled, it's done. Yeah, yeah, so apparently he the allegation is that he would have had to have died I had and been on his front for the first face down, at least the well face down. It doesn't say,

it doesn't matter where. If he had just rolled over in the water so that you just face up after you drowned and everything, that's you know, that doesn't that's you know, you would have to be for somebody to have to somebody to place him in their face up in the water, then they would have had to have face down somewhere. You're not going to throw your body in the water, leave it there for eight hours and

then go back in your boat and turn it over. No. No, And then that's what Devin's getting at, is that he drowned face down. Yeah, well that if or he was faced down and then at some point. What all I'm saying is that he he died face down and was face down for the first eight hours. Whether it was in water or on land, it remains to be determined, especially since you know, we can just go into this

right now, since it is an active shipping lane. It doesn't seem crazy out of the realm of possibilities to me that in the like four months that he was in the river to whatever the two months he was in the river, he could have gotten flipped over somehow. You know that that's reasonable to me. Whether or not you know land sea, I don't, But the fact of the matter is is that it does seem that he

died on his front. The autopsy also apparently stated that there were literature marks around his neck, which would indicate that he had been strangled, strangled with something there m there were fly eggs in his pubic hair, which suggested that he would have had to have been allowed to decompose on land in an area that was warmer than approximately forty degrees fahrenheit. Why does that have to be land? I mean it could be somewhere warmer but still in

the water. Potentially good flies, don't They were like horseflies. They don't lay eggs in the water, So his pelvis would have had to have been above water for them to have And that's really unlikely, super unlikely, Yeah, super can I can? I I don't actually think that's super unlikely.

I also think that explains why he doesn't have boots if he washes up on shore for a while under a dock or something, and some homeless dude finds seems like, hey, free pair of boots, nice shirt, I'll take that, and he's sitting there for a while. That would explain a why those things were gone, and be why he had flies on him because docks, you know, I mean, the docks aren't just against the sea wall. That's true, there is you know, the land does slope down underneath them.

So that's why that's why I was. I had to bring that up because it just doesn't mean a whole lot to me. That's fair. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. There was some what they are calling severe blackening of Patrick's head, upper torso and lower waste area. The medical examiner says that this is decomposition due to exposure. Gannon disagrees. He thinks that it was actually burning that was sustained prior to Patrick's death, like we took a blowtorch to you burning,

or thrown into a barrel that was on fire. Burn. Wait for a minute, that's fine, heay? Cool. Uh. They suggest that he was tied by his neck to a chair and then exposed to fire of some kind, causing his back to be largely protected from the burns, because you know, the middle of his back had no burns or anything like that. Okay, but they tied they tied into a chair. They would have tied his hands to

the chair at least two right, Yeah, um okay. And then one of our favorite terms that we've talked about, Yeah, ever, Devon's favorite favorite thing ever. Yeah, apparently there was a really distinct lack of skin slippage. But I agree that that does kind of present a problem for the argument that he was in the water for more than say, like twenty four hours, because skin starts to slip off your body when it's been in the water for sustained

periods of time, particularly two months. I just wonder about the temperature effects of the temperatures on that. If it's February when he goes in, it's frozen. Yes. They also maintained that the decomposition on his body was not consistent, rather that the top of him was like really decomposed, while the bottom of him was almost not decomposed at all, because he was wearing his jeans, I don't know, or because the top of him was maybe more out of

the water. You know that he was wearing his shoes on a sloping bank. I don't know. They point out four distinct parts of like different stages of decomposition happening in his on his body, but I also don't think that's an argument for him being held on land either. You know, I just don't think if you're going to argue, well, his body was in different states of decomposition, well, like,

how did that happen on land even then? Versus why is that a bigger problem than just saying, well, his feet were more submerged in colder water, so they're better preserved than the top of him. How did Okay, let's go back and address some of the stuff that we've just talked about, because I think we can talk about some of it. As I said, I don't have a problem with Patrick's body maybe being rotated. It was an

active shipping, as Steve suggested it is. I guess it's possible that he you know, kind of washed ashore for a certain amount of time, washed up on something whatever. Yeah, the severe blackening um, according to the medical examiner report, was actually um like black spots, which I have the sense of being kind of more like cigarette burn type sizes, which the medical examiner says is like decomposition, which makes sense, So I not giants swathed skin, which is what I

got the impression of when you read just Gammon's report. Yes, we're starting to get yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing is that there wasn't evidence of anything other than alcohol in his system, with the exception of their being really trace amounts of the g h B, which is a thing that naturally occurs in the body when we decompose a right, So take that as you will, okay.

Gannon says that Patrick his theory about what happened to Patrick is that Patrick was grabbed, He was stalked and kidnapped and held on land and tortured and then murdered and then dropped into the river like three days before they found his body. He was he was disappeared for fifty days. His body was not recovered for fifty days. That presents problems in and of itself for me. You know, they say, well, the skins slippage, Well, okay, sure, yeah,

the skin slippage, that is a problem. I agree. The kind of damage you see to Patrick's body isn't super consistent with the kind of damage you would see from a body floating in the water. For fifty days. But they also say that his blood alcohol level was the point one too. But they say that he was held on land alive for like forty seven days Gannon and his investigators and then you know, killed and then dropped him the roof. So I don't I don't know. They

can't have it both ways. They can't say he was held on land but his blood alcohol level was only this, but this, but he was killed just a couple of days. You know, they just can't have it both ways. Well, I think also keeping the guy on land and torturing him for forty seven days, he would have to have him tied up the entire time. There would be signs

of that his ankles and his wrists. Yeah, or even if he was locked up somewhere, there would be you know, he would he wouldn't be eating properly, so like there would be physical sign of some kind of abuse. And even if he was only held for a couple of days, uh and tortured before he was killed and then was killed, you know, like three days in and then held on land for that long, then his body would have been in much more, much more advanced state of decomposition. One

would think unless he was during the freezer. Yeah, but there weren't signed I mean it didn't. There weren't signs of that anyway. It's it's weird for sure. I don't want to keep talking about it too much because I mean there's a lot of weird stuff. Yeah, on both on both sides, I think, you know, both on the medical examiner side and GM inside. Yeah, they you know, I can see where it could be killing maybe somebody he knew actually really had a passionate hatred of him

and drugged. But that that that is completely counter to the theory. Yeah, that's completely if if it's one person who hated him, that's completely counter to this entire larger thing that he is being shoehorn into. Right, So that's the thing. Right, Let's take a step back now and say, regardless of whether or not Patrick McNeil was murdered, wasn't the work of a serial killer? Probably not, Yeah, just a just an individual. And so there's he's one of

two weird cases of cases talking about something else. We're not talking about, are we, No, no, no, For a while, We're just going to briefly touch on another guy. His name is Chris Jenkins and he was absolutely, no questions asked, murdered, just there's no he was. There's pretty much no one disputes. Initially he was classified as a suicide. We could probably do an entire show on this guy. We might who knows.

But on Halloween two thousand two, Chris was thrown out of a bar that he was in with his friends. Witnesses say that staff was instructed that he was not to be allowed back in, despite the fact that it was I think it was like twenty degrees fahrenheit outside. He was dressed in a cheap Indian costume because it was Halloween. It's like nylon, really really thin. And his coat, his cell phone, his money, everything. We're still inside with his friends, who apparently were having such a good time

they didn't even realize their friend was gone. Halloween. Um. Four months later, Chris's body was found. He was just reported missing, and you know, they did a search for him and nobody found anything. His body was found four months later, floating, face up, arms crossed, frozen pretty much solid in the Mississippi River. It's possible that Chris was involved in a gang initiation beating, maybe thrown into the

back of a van and tortured. It's not great. Um, whatever the outcome was for him, it was definitely unfortunate. But it was murder, and so he was beaten to death. No, I don't, I you know what, that's my question. You keep saying it was most definitely a murder, and I don't. I haven't read anything that shows me that it was a murder. Well, the way in which he was found. People don't like drown and then wash up with their

arms crossed neatly across their chest and face up. There's that Buddies get messed with by people after the fact, sadly, pretty regular basis. We can find him and go, you know, I haven't you know the guy who hasn't has meds in two weeks and has wandered around and puts him to rest by putting his arms over his chest and shoving him back out into the water, thinking that he's a viking or something. You know, I mean, these things happen. Yeah, No, he was. He was murdered. It's the police are still

looking into why. So there's obviously, since it's an open case, details but but but he's also been lumped in too. It's the smiley face guys but he did drown right again. You don't know, I don't like I said that actually be a good way to kill somebody's it's like winter, you know, and it's it's winter out and it's a bunch of you grabbing. I had thrown off the bridge into the water, swim. He's going to die of exposed.

He was not thrown off the bridge because the only bridge he could have been thrown off of had a really high retaining wall and he would have had to have been lifted. I think it was like a six foot tall they did. They did a metric on this.

A six foot tall man would have had to have lifted this guy all the way above his body his body height, and then thrown him twelve ft to throw him entirely clear, like into the river, to throw him entirely clear of all of the stuff that was below the river, to have him not have the bones broken and his body that he didn't have broken in his body, So that seemed pretty unlikely. Also, there was surveillance cameras

on the bridge and that didn't happen. Okay, those are the two guys who were murdered of the forty five that were murdered and the two most likely the two most murdered of them. Like that, So let's talk about theories real quick. We're doing typical Devon style. It's it's real or it's not real, So let's start with real. I'll grant you that that is it does seem like a lot of white college aged athletic men falling into

bodies of water. But I'll also grant you that um to borrow a phrase, the killer could have a different name, and that's alcoholism. Alcohol. Yeah. Yeah, there's a there's a blog that catalogs literally every single missing person that could possibly fit into this m O, and it's pretty fascinating and has probably more than hundreds to be honest, I

didn't count of entries. But the official line, like I said on the Smiley Face, Killer has claimed forty five victims between and now, which actually only yeah years, which really only means that that's like two and a half drunk dudes falling into a body of water year. More than two and a half drunk dudes fall into a body of water every year and don't come back out. Yeah, so there's that it's not real, And I'll tell you why wait, wait that that that's why it's real. That's

why it's real. Okay, yeah it's it's not. And I'll tell you lots of reasons why. Let's talk about reasons why there's a real lack of m O here. None of the smiley faces that were found close to the bodies um match, and in fact, the investigators admit that there's literally no common reality between any of them. There's

no common stroke, there's no common style. There are different colors, different paints, different ages, different type of paints, different ways of you know, smiles, some of them with the circle, some of them are just the two lines in the smile. Yeah.

Did did they ever in these cases that they actually go out and find any locals who actually hung out near the drowning spots like fishing or whatever, and just asked them how long to smiley face had been there, because that's the thing that it's a supposed entry point. They don't know if that's where the body went in. But also, I mean more than that, like several, but not all of these cases have smiley faces attached them. In fact, you will notice we just spent a half

an hour talking about Patrick O'Neill. Guess what they didn't talk about at all with that case. Smiley face, no smiley face. Probably there was one, because guess what, it's New York City, and I swear to you, we could walk three blocks from where we are right now and find at least five smiley faces graffiti on things. You could be in the middle of the red Woods. I'm not lying. I was in the Redwoods recently. You walk to a tree and there's a smiley face card carved

in the stump. You were never more than five miles away from a smiley face graffiti. So there's that. Yep, they're very popular, very happy to Yeah. Additionally, the two people that we just talked about the outliers, they're they're just that they're outliers. They're not the norm. The two guys that we just talked about, they're the outliers in this case. And actually one of them, I'm not even

convinced was actually murdered. And how are they the outliers? Well, all all of the other forty five victims are typical drowning cases. They were all found face down in position with you, These are outliers because there's some o there's something suspicious going on. Literally every single other victim as far as I can tell, just seems like it's a

typical drowning. Okay, Okay. The other graffiti that was found thea it was this is graffiti that was found also kind of near some of the bodies they found, And this is the one they say is taunting the police. Um, they say both of them are taunting the police. Okay, but this is it's just graffiti. I mean, I lived in the Midwest. These this graffiti was only found near the bodies. In the Midwest, it's a pretty common term. There's lots of you know, none orders and grocery stores

and all that stuff that bear the same name. I don't know what to say about that. It's just graffiti, you guys. Yeah, it sounds fair to me. But also, as we talked about before, there's no correlation. It's never like and five paces from the body, there was no it's like within I don't know, I don't know. I just so, as previously stated, nineties six percent of the victims showed no evidence of trauma or anything weird. Any foul play questioned. And you know what's what's really more

rare than m drunk guys doing stupid things. Well, that's not rare at all. But well, but you know what's more rare than that, it's homicidal drownings. As it turns out, they only account for two tenths of one percent of all of the killings in the United States. It's not that easy to do that. It's really hard. It's a lot easy to stab somebody or shoeing. Yeah. In fact, in a city in Wisconsin where you know, a fair amount of these because it's cold and whatever of these drownings,

the supposed murders happen. In a period of four years, the police have stopped more than fifty young, drunk athletic males from approaching the river there. Do you know why? Why do you know why the men are approaching? It seems like it would be a fun place to pee. Exactly. We're drunk, we have to pee, and as men, that means we have to pee on something, and it's fun to pee on the ice. Yeah, there you go, snow.

We all did a school like you didn't, but Joe and I did just what's kind of illegible and your yeah, this is harder or something. No, we totally live off. Sorry. So to add to this, Gannon, he was really he was really obsessed with the Patrick McNeill case, and reports are actually he was. He was obsessed to kind of an unhealthy level, and he has been kind of the primary proponent of this theory. He's certainly gotten a lot of people on board. That's there, there's no question about that.

But like we said before, there's not even a mention of a smiley face in conjunction with the McNeil case. And I don't want to slander again in because I do I do believe that he's a really authentic, true investigator who just wants to get to the bottom of this this murder that's haunted him, or this case that's haunted him, whether it wants to hold him up. But I think it's more than that. I think he probably made a promise to himself that he would get to

the bottom of it. And I but I just it just seems like he's looking for something to make it all makes sense and it's just not there. Yeah, I think so sad, But yeah, and also you know, of course he wants to make a name for himself too. It might be that some of that there, But like I said, I do think his intentions at the core

are are good. I do think that he just wants to solve this case or these cases, because he's actually investigating, um, the Jenkins case as well, So he has two unsolved deaths on his hands that he really wants to solve. And and I can see the tendency to kind of want to sensationalize it and make it a big thing. But I just I don't see it. Guys. You know, you guys all wanted to hear us talk about this. I don't know what you were hoping for. You know us pretty well by now, A lot of a lot

of people requested this one. A lot of I can is this just seems like a desperate attempt to link things together. Yeah, I mean even you know, I think you guys probably looked at some of the Reddit threads that came up, and even in those, it's kind of this. I think it's a human nature to want to find

some meaning and death that was meaningful to you. You know, there are people on these raddit threads who are saying, oh my god, this exactly mirrors what happened to my you know, my cousin, Uh, except that he didn't drown. He was just found dead because he hit his head in this construction site. But it wasn't accidental. There's no way it was accidental. And there was a smiley face that was graffiti, you know. And it's just I understand that,

you know, I do. I at the core of me, as a human who sympathetic, I understand the want to say, like, no, he couldn't have just been drunk and done something dumb. He fits this, he fits this mold, but it so on that downer. Do you have anything to add to this? I want to throw down the gauntlet to the smiley face killer and say, just go pick some athletic young man here in town and kill him and leave a smiley face, but make it an upside down from a smile. Yeah, andes have the eyes be a T and an s.

Here we go. Then we'll know. Yeah, well yeah, we definitely that kind of exposure. Way to go. YouTube. We'll definitely revisit this whole thing if that happens. Yeah. So I did reference some links if you're interested in this case, they're probably a pretty good start from the horse's mouths if you will um. Those will be posted on our website, along with a link to download a link to donate a link um to buy shirts or do whatever you

want forever we haven't. That website is Thinking Sideways Podcast dot com. Um. You can also hang out with us on social media. We've got a Facebook it's a group and a page. We are also on Twitter. We're thinking sideways UM. On Twitter, we're trying to twitter tweet tweet Twitter twitter rise. I thought you're gonna say twitch. I don't know what. We're trying to do something there. We also have a subreddit. If you're a Reddit person, we're

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