Pod Insights Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén The Smiley Face Murder Theory About this episode This episode first aired on November 18, 2024. Across the U. S., college-aged men have been found dead in rivers, lakes, and ponds, and while their deaths have been ruled accidental, a team of retired detectives believes something more nefarious is going on. We’re joined by producer Chelsea Wood and co-hosts Aine Cain and Kevin Greenlee from The Murder Sheet.
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Transcript 0:03 Speaker 00 Hey listeners, Chelsea here. I'm a producer on this show and I'm in your ears today to share some exciting changes coming to the feed. Rest assured, you're still gonna hear the most interesting true crime stories from all around the world, backed by the research you've come to expect. But very soon, we'll be introducing a new host to all of you. It's someone who shares our obsession with true crime and the criminal mind, a dynamic storyteller with a perspective we think you're really gonna love. And before we launch into this next evolution, we wanted to take a beat and revisit some of your favorite stories from the past eight years. Episodes that reflect the journey this show has taken while we get ready for something new. Today, we're revisiting a guest episode featuring Anya Kane and Kevin Greenlee
0:47 Speaker 00 from the podcast Murder Sheet. Enjoy.
0:54 Speaker 01 Due to the nature of today's episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and sexual assault. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen.
1:12 Speaker 02 The idea of a mysterious gang of serial killers traveling the country stalking young men who are just beginning their lives, there's something very darkly fascinating about that that really grabs your attention.
1:30 Speaker 01 I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram, @serialkillerspodcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Today's episode is about the smiley face killers theory. Over nearly three decades, at least 600 college-aged men have been found dead in bodies of water. Their deaths ruled accidental drownings, but a team of retired detectives have made it their life's mission to prove the deaths aren't accidental at all. They're the work of a gang of serial killers.
2:13 Speaker 01 Later in the episode, our producer Chelsea will be joined by journalist Anya Kane and attorney Kevin Greenlee, who host true crime podcast The Murder Sheet. With Chelsea, Anya and Kevin will use their expertise and experiences to analyze and dissect the smiley face murder theory. Stay with us.
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5:13 Speaker 01 It began at the same place it usually did for Fordham students in the 1990s, The Dapper Dog, a bar in Manhattan's Upper East Side. It was a long trek from the Bronx, where the university is located, but the bar's supposed lax rules around IDs meant underage students could indulge alongside upperclassmen. On February 16, 1997, 20-year-old Patrick McNeil braved the below-freezing temperatures to join his friends at The Dapper Dog. One of his roommates was bartending that night, so they thought maybe they'd get some free drinks or heavy pours. Patrick was a junior at Fordham. He was majoring in accounting, but had always felt a pull toward law enforcement.
5:58 Speaker 01 The drinks flowed a little too freely that night. Around midnight, Patrick took a tumble in the bathroom. Perhaps he decided he'd hit his limit and should head home. It was a school night, after all. Everyone had class the next morning. Patrick told his friends he was tired and that he'd take the subway back to campus alone. By this time, the dapper dog had become a nuisance in the neighborhood. It was basically an off-campus frat house. Neighbors would frequently report excessive noise and public drunkenness. So when witnesses saw Patrick stumbling out of the bar and down Second Avenue, they didn't bat an eye.
6:40 Speaker 01 But unbeknownst to Patrick, someone was following him. As he made his way home, a van that had been double parked on Second Avenue tailed him. When Patrick stopped, the van stopped. When Patrick turned onto East 90th Street, so did the van. And that was the last time anyone saw Patrick alive. Four days later, Detective Sergeant Kevin Gannon was assigned to Patrick's case. Over the 16 years of his career, Gannon had worked his way up from beat cop to the head of the robbery unit. Just two days before Patrick went missing, he was promoted into the missing persons squad.
7:23 Speaker 01 Also on the case were the people of Portchester, New York, Patrick's hometown. Off-duty officers traveled to Manhattan to search the streets. Community members set up a command center to take phone calls and print flyers. His parents, Jackie and Pat, hosted a rally where they collected donations and sent out a call for more volunteers. The NYPD dispatched police helicopters. They scoured the East River for clues. They collected tips and possible sightings, but nothing went anywhere. Patrick vanished without a trace.
8:03 Speaker 01 On April 7th, 50 days after his disappearance, Patrick's body was found in the East River in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn near a pollution control plant. It was 12 miles from where he was last seen. After the autopsy, Dr. Charles Hirsch, the medical examiner, concluded Patrick's cause of death was drowning. But the case was left undetermined pending further investigation. That, Dr. Hirsch said, is because it's unclear how Patrick ended up in the water. He could have fallen in, been pushed, or jumped. The toxicology report showed that Patrick had a moderate blood alcohol content in his body.
8:47 Speaker 01 Dr. Hirsch didn't give an exact number, but said the amount was over the legal driving limit, which at that time was 0.10%. There were no other substances present in his body, and he didn't have physical injuries. That led the medical examiner's office to believe foul play was unlikely. But Kevin Gannon disagreed. He worked the case for six weeks. He knew it better than anyone. To him, the answer was clear. Patrick McNeil was murdered. Initially, Gannon's theory rested on the water currents. Investigators on the case had speculated Patrick fell into the East River in Manhattan and drowned.
9:30 Speaker 01 Then his body floated down the water into New York Bay, where it was later found. Because he was still wearing the same clothes he wore to the Dapper Dog, police speculated Patrick may have died the same night he disappeared. Gannon spoke with the NYPD Harbor Unit, who patrol the river daily. They gave him information about the strength of the water currents on the night Patrick drowned. But it didn't add up. There's no way the current could have carried Patrick 12 miles down the river. Gannon thought someone, possibly the person in the van spotted that night, abducted and killed Patrick, drove to Bay Ridge, and left his body in the water.
10:14 Speaker 01 The detective needed to track down that van. Thankfully, witnesses gave him a partial license plate number. But when Gannon took it to his supervisors, they told him identification would be too costly for the department. With that, his case hit a dead end. During the course of his investigation, Gannon grew close to Patrick's parents. He told them he believed foul play was involved, and he vowed to get justice for their son. Eventually, Gannon was taken off the case and reassigned, but he didn't forget about Patrick, especially not when over the next 15 months, two more young men died the exact
10:57 Speaker 01 same way. On December 31, 1997, 22-year-old Lawrence Andrews Jr. took the train from his home in Brewster, New York, to Grand Central Station in Manhattan. Larry, as he was known, had plans to attend Times Square's New Year's Eve Ball Drop, a yearly tradition for him and his friends. But shortly after midnight, Larry got separated from his group. He was spotted an hour later by a different group of friends having a drink in Grand Central Station. He was last seen around 2:00 a.m. walking west on 42nd Street.
11:36 Speaker 01 Six weeks later, Larry was found dead in Bay Ridge, in the same waters Patrick had been found 10 months prior. Medical examiners concluded his cause of death was drowning, but again couldn't determine how he got there. Just as he did in Patrick's case, Detective Gannon consulted with the NYPD Harbor Unit to get information on water currents, and again, it didn't add up. Typically, when someone drowns, their body is recovered within 100 yards from where they fell into the water. Larry somehow floated nine miles down the river.
12:16 Speaker 01 More suspiciously, he was found just a few yards away from where Patrick had been found. Were they both kidnapped, killed, and left in the exact same waters? A few months later, it happened again.
12:35 Speaker 01 On May 17th, 19-year-old Joshua Bender's body was found in the Hudson River, near 138th Street in Harlem. Joshua was a student at Yeshiva University and a volunteer with the ambulance corps. He'd gone missing two weeks prior, but much less is known about the circumstances of his disappearance than those of Patrick and Larry. He was last seen in his dorm, three miles away from where the body was found, studying for a final exam. As his mother would later say in a press conference, "It seems as though he has vanished into thin air."
13:14 Speaker 01 But the conclusion was much the same: accidental drowning, with no idea how he ended up in the water. Kevin Gannon didn't work on Joshua's case, but he did notice the similarities to Patrick and Larry's deaths. He continued on in his career until he retired from the force in 2001. But he wasn't done. About a year later, he turned on the news to find his suspected serial killer was on the move.
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14:52 Speaker 01 In October 2002, retired NYPD detective Kevin Gannon learned that over the course of 10 days, several people in Minnesota and Wisconsin had gone missing. The cases involved promising young men, a lot like Patrick O’Neil, Larry Andrews, and Joshua Bender. Gannon passed along information to the agencies involved in the drownings, then called his former partner, Tony Duarte. He’d made a promise to the O’Neil family, and it was time to get to work. Meanwhile, Lee Gilbertson, a criminology professor at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, had noticed the same trend.
15:34 Speaker 01 In 2006, the body of Scott Radell was recovered from the Mississippi River. Scott was a 21-year-old St. Cloud student who was a self-described outdoorsman. He’d gone missing while bar hopping with his friends. Scott’s death prompted Gilbertson and two of his graduate students to take a closer look at the drowning deaths that had occurred between 1997 and 2006. They found 22 victims who all fit the same profile: white or Asian men in their twenties, around 5’8” and 165 pounds, athletic and academically successful. All of the victims had gone to college
16:17 Speaker 01 in the 50-mile stretch between Moorhead, Minnesota, and East Lansing, Michigan. 94% of the drownings occurred within 100 miles of Interstate 94, which runs between the two cities. The cause of death in each case was either accidental or undetermined. Gilbertson believed that may be the case for some of the deaths, but not all of them. Accidents are random, so why did every victim fit the same profile? Gilbertson published his findings in 2006. When Duarte and Gannon caught wind, they went to visit the professor and recruited
16:57 Speaker 01 him into their newly-formed task force, Global Death Investigations, or GDI. They brought in another retired NYPD detective, Mike Donovan, and started touring the country to revisit drowning sites, interview friends and family, and pore over police reports. The team at GDI built out a database of over 300 drowning deaths. Their initial goal was to identify which cases were actually accidental and which could have been homicides. Even accidental drowning deaths are among the hardest for law enforcement to investigate, but it's far more difficult to prove that a drowning was a murder.
17:39 Speaker 01 Water might wash away crucial evidence, or the body may have been exposed to environmental elements, or even an animal. Without DNA or obvious signs of homicide, the investigation becomes a guessing game. Did the victim have any enemies? A jilted lover? A scorned friend? The Center for Homicide Research, a nonprofit organization dedicated to homicide prevention, used FBI data to calculate that only 0.2% of all murders in the US can be attributed to drowning. But Kevin Gannon thought, what if police and medical examiners are completely missing homicides?
18:21 Speaker 01 In his experience, law enforcement typically investigates drownings as accidents. Gannon says crucial evidence can be overlooked by taking this approach. According to GDI, this was the case in the death of Dakota James. Dakota grew up in Frederick, Maryland. According to his mom, Pam, he was smart and outgoing. He was athletic. He played soccer and was the swim team captain in school. At the time of his death, 23-year-old Dakota was a master's student at Duquesne University. On January 25, 2017, he went out with friends in downtown Pittsburgh.
19:02 Speaker 01 He left the bars alone around 11:30 PM to head to his house, which was across the Allegheny River. Dakota was last seen on CCTV nearly 20 minutes later in an alleyway near Katz Plaza. When Dakota didn't show up for work the next day, his boss contacted his family, who filed a missing persons report. Police launched a wide-scale search, and on March 6, 40 days after he disappeared, Dakota's body was found in the Ohio River. After the autopsy, Dakota's death was ruled an accidental drowning. Police theorized Dakota fell in the Allegheny River near Roberto Clemente Bridge after
19:47 Speaker 01 stopping there to urinate. His body then floated 10 miles down the river, through a dam, then came to rest, where the Allegheny turns into the Ohio River. But Dakota's family didn't agree with the police's conclusion. They insisted Dakota had been murdered, but detectives dismissed the possibility of foul play. After the case was closed, Dakota's parents, Jeff and Pam, read about the Smiley Face killers online and reached out to Kevin Gannon. When GDI took on Dakota's case, they found that police had either looked over, misinterpreted, or just completely ignored several pieces of evidence.
20:31 Speaker 01 One bombshell came after GDI hired a forensic expert to assess Dakota's computer. The analysis revealed Dakota's PayPal account was used in a transaction nearly 48 hours after his disappearance, suggesting he was still alive at that time. In many of the cases they study, GDI suspects the killer holds their victim for a period of time before murdering them and leaving their body. ...body in water. They believe the PayPal charge proves that's exactly what happened to Dakota. And that's not all GDI discovered. Kevin Gannon and Mike Donovan consulted with a private investigator who'd been hired by Dakota's family before his body was found.
21:16 Speaker 01 The P I had done a comprehensive review of the camera footage around Dakota's last whereabouts and near the Roberto Clemente Bridge, where police believe he'd fallen into the water. The private detective found that only one camera picked up Dakota the night he went missing, the one in the plaza where he was last seen. Not a single camera around the river, nor on the bridge, had spotted Dakota that night. After learning about the camera footage and PayPal transaction, Gannon and his team had even more questions about the police's conclusion, so they dug deeper. According to the official report, Dakota's body hadn't suffered any physical trauma, but after consulting with the U.S. Army Corps
22:01 Speaker 01 of Engineers, GDI discovered Dakota's body went through a gap in the dam. How could he possibly have floated 10 miles down the river and squeezed through that gap without any injury to his body? GDI needed more information, most importantly, the autopsy photos. But according to the James family, the Allegheny County District Attorney didn't allow them to view the full medical examiner's report. They also say that the police who investigated the Patrick McNeil death, which kicked off Kevin Gannon's investigation, rejected his family's requests for the full file until nearly 12 years after his death.
22:43 Speaker 01 According to Gannon, that's typical protocol in an active homicide case, not an accident.
22:50 Speaker 01 Armed with that information, Dakota's mother Pam called the district attorney to discuss her son's file. In the meeting, the DA finally agreed to release the entire report to Pam, who in turn, shared it with GDI. The file only led to more questions than answers. Despite the police's initial insistence that Dakota's body was free from injury, the autopsy photos seemed to reveal strange marks around his neck, information that was missing from the written autopsy report. GDI consulted with Dr. Cyril Wecht, a renowned medical examiner, who agreed Dakota may have been strangled.
23:31 Speaker 01 With this new evidence, Pam and Kevin Gannon went to the DA to ask for Dakota's case to be reopened and reexamined. To get traction, Pam took the case to the media, and the medical examiner's office said they'd be willing to reconsider. But as of 2024, Dakota's case remains closed. The more GDI investigated these drowning deaths, the more they saw a pattern similar to what they'd seen in Dakota's case: missing evidence, lack of witness follow-ups, and autopsy inconsistencies. They started to believe the cases could be connected, maybe even the work of a serial killer.
24:16 Speaker 01 To determine whether a serial killer may be responsible, the FBI links murders using a variety of factors, including a consistent method or weapon used in the murder, similar victim type, and geographic location. This was a difficult task for GDI, because the deaths were classified as accidental drownings, there were no weapons or MO to connect to one another, most of the bodies didn't show signs of foul play, no gunshot wounds or other injuries. One day, Gannon saw a drug information poster tacked up on a police station's wall. There was one drug that stuck out to him: GHB. That's when it hit him.
24:59 Speaker 01 What if the victims were being drugged? GHB stands for gamma hydroxybutyric acid. A prescription version is used to treat narcolepsy. But if it's misused, it can cause memory loss, confusion, and physical weakness. In the 90s, it became popular at dance clubs and was dubbed the "date rape drug" because it was commonly used in sexual assault cases. A 2020 survey in the UK estimated around one-quarter of rape victims had been dosed with the drug. GHB is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, leaving someone completely unaware their drink has been spiked.
25:42 Speaker 01 The person may start to feel out of control of their own body in just 15 minutes after consuming the drug. So GDI searched through toxicology reports. Not every medical examiner's office tested for GHB, so they couldn't check their entire database. But they found at least 30 victims, including Dakota James, had the drug in their system at the time of death. So now they could make a connection with the method of murder. And thanks to Gilbertson's work, they knew the victimology and locations. As we mentioned earlier, the professor had already identified the victim type in his
26:22 Speaker 01 study: white or Asian men, athletic, good grades, similar body types. And the locations revealed another pattern. Not only did the deaths typically occur in college towns, but they seemed to center around certain hotspots, mostly in the Midwest. At least 12 victims were found in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Three were in East Lansing, Michigan. And the killings in Chicago may date as far back as 1999. All in all, GDI's database includes over 600 deaths across 11 states. With so many victims in so many locations, it seemed impossible that one serial killer could be responsible.
27:07 Speaker 01 So GDI thought, what if there's a gang of serial killers?
27:13 Speaker 01 Kevin Gannon, Tony Duarte, and Lee Gilbertson had all been gang experts in their careers. Through their work, they knew gangs are often affiliated with symbols, whether it's hand signs or graffiti. Similarly, some serial killers use a signature, which according to psychologist Scott Bond, reveals the offenders' fantasies. Sometimes the signature is displayed at the crime scene, like Jack the Ripper's propensity to mutilate his victims. Other times, it's revealed after the murder, so the killer can take credit, like when Dennis Rader signed his letters to the media with his nickname, BTK. Signatures are a way for serial killers to take credit for their murders,
27:57 Speaker 01 and for police to connect the crimes. Through visits to the drowning sites and photos taken at the times of the deaths, Kevin Gannon and Tony Duarte noticed a symbol continue to pop up: Smiley face graffiti. A smiley face was found on a bridge upstream from Dakota James' body. In another case, a smiley face was found painted on a drainage ditch, another on a rock. GDI claims they've found at least 22 smiley faces, graffitied near body discovery sites. Finally, GDI felt they could link many of the deaths in their database,
28:39 Speaker 01 and in 2008, they went public with their theory. The smiley face killers are a well-structured, organized gang with cells in major cities across the United States who drug, abduct, hold the victims for a period of time before they murder them and then place them in the water. But not everyone believed them.
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30:12 Speaker 00 Hi, I'm Chelsea, and I'm one of the producers of Serial Killers. I've been working on this show for five years, and for nearly just as long, I've wanted to cover the Smiley Face Killer's story. It's fascinating to me, especially because I have a small connection to it. I went to undergrad in North Texas, and not long after I graduated, one of my classmates drowned in Lady Bird Lake while on a trip to Austin. In the weeks after their death, I learned there had long been rumors of a serial killer in the Austin area. It was said the killer targeted young men, drugged them, and left their bodies in Lady Bird Lake. Some believed my classmate was one of the victims of what became known as the Rainy
30:56 Speaker 00 Street Killer, named after a street near the lake where many of Austin's bars are located. Their death was ruled accidental. But a few years later, I learned about the Smiley Face Killer's theory, and it gave me pause. Could my classmate's death be related?
31:14 Speaker 00 There are so many layers to this theory. I feel like I need help dissecting it all. So I'm excited to bring on Kevin Greenley and Anya Kane, hosts of the podcast The Murder Sheet. Kevin is an intellectual property attorney, and Anya's background is in journalism at the nexus point of business and crime. Together, they look at cases through a legal and journalistic lens, applying what they've learned in their careers to the stories they examine on their podcasts. I asked Anya and Kevin for their initial thoughts on the smiley face killer's theory.
31:47 Speaker 03 So I get my interest in true crime partly from my mom, and this is one of those cases that I know she's followed over the years and would often talk about and show a lot of interest in. So my awareness about the smiley face killer's theory sort of comes from her and then looking into it myself. Personally, I am somewhat skeptical.
32:10 Speaker 02 The idea of a mysterious gang of serial killers traveling the country stalking young men who are just beginning their lives, there's something very darkly fascinating about that that really grabs your attention. And if that was a movie, I mean, I'd go see that movie. One of the things that interested me about this theory is also one of the things that makes me doubt it a bit. And that's the fact that there's so many of these deaths. If, in fact, all of these deaths were linked to a particular group of serial killers, I would think they would have left behind quite a bit of evidence. So it would be more than a theory.
32:54 Speaker 02 It would actually be a fact.
32:58 Speaker 00 Researchers have long raised questions about the smiley face killer's theory. In particular, the Center for Homicide Research published a direct rebuttal of the theory. To unpack these criticisms, I asked Kevin and Anya to apply their investigative skills and help me answer some questions. One of the first questions on my mind was the importance of the smiley face symbol, because, well, they're everywhere.
33:23 Speaker 03 I know from my own personal experience in my hometown's bakery. They would make these yellow smiley face cookies that I was obsessed with it as a kid. And I, I think that, you know, when we, when we talked about smiley faces in my family, we were often referring to those cookies that I always wanted. In, in addition to that, it's a pretty common motif in art, as you mentioned, with everyone from Banksy onward using smiley faces in their artwork as sort of an expression of happiness.
33:52 Speaker 02 And, you know, I'm a comic book guy. So the first thing that came to my mind is the fact that the logo for the comic book, The Watchman, is actually a smiley face covered with blood. And I was also thinking Anya used to cover Walmart. And Walmart in the past has used a smiley face logo.
34:11 Speaker 00 The same group of researchers found that not only did the smiley faces differ from case to case, so too did the locations of the graffiti. Sometimes a smiley face was found in close proximity to the body, sometimes much further away.
34:26 Speaker 03 It seems it could be confirmation bias. If you're looking for a smiley face, you can probably find one.
34:33 Speaker 00 I decided to put that idea to the test.
34:37 Speaker 00 I live in Los Angeles and know that the LA River is pretty well-known for its graffiti. So on a sunny Saturday, I took a stroll along the river and kept my eyes peeled for smiley faces. I walked for just over two miles and counted seven smiley faces and luckily, zero bodies. So is the smiley face a mark of a killer or just a ubiquitous image?
35:00 Speaker 02 It is important to have an open mind and consider all the factors. And one thing that gives me a bit of pause in this particular case is the presence of GHB in the bodies. I'm gonna be honest, I don't know a lot about GHB, but it does seem to me kind of peculiar that it was found in the bodies of all of the victims the GDI tested.
35:22 Speaker 00 Kevin raised a good point, but when I looked into it, I found out that when GHB is found in a body, it could indicate any number of things. Because GHB is sometimes taken recreationally, it's possible some of the men in this case took the drug knowingly. GHB also occurs naturally. The body produces it in small amounts, but after death, the decomposition process can actually add more of the substance into a person's system. Testing isn't really accurate enough to show whether the GHB was in the bloodstream before or after death.
35:57 Speaker 03 So for me, when I'm looking at whether I think a death could be a homicide, a suicide, or some sort of accident, I like to look at the totality of all the circumstances and sort of figure out what does most of the evidence point to. So while the presence of GHB in a lot of these bodies definitely gave me pause, the fact that it is known to naturally occur in bodies after people die also makes me think that that could very well just, again, point to an accident rather than some malfeasance on a killer's part.
36:31 Speaker 00 There's one important thing that the global death investigators urged: that unless there is an eyewitness to the contrary, every death should be treated like a homicide. Their work has yet to definitively link all the deaths to a group of serial killers, but it did alter the outcome for one family. Chris Jenkins grew up in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. According to his mom, Jan, he was the jokester of the family, always looking to make everyone around him laugh. In 2002, he was 21, a star lacrosse player, and a business student due to graduate early from the University of Minnesota. On Halloween night, Chris put on his costume and went out to Lone Tree Bar in Minneapolis. Around 12:30 a.m., he was asked to leave the bar,
37:15 Speaker 00 though it's unclear why. According to GDI, police initially didn't put many resources toward the search for Chris. Almost a week after his disappearance, the Jenkins family was desperate, so they paid for search dogs out of pocket.
37:31 Speaker 03 In our experience covering different crime cases, we often see, especially in high-profile cases, families take a leadership role when it comes to advocating for someone who's disappeared or who has been murdered. And I personally just reflect when I see that about how incredible and strong it is for these folks to be doing that while also grappling with the fear and grief and anguish that comes with a tragedy like this.
38:00 Speaker 02 One thing that I always think of is that, of course, law enforcement, people in these professional organizations, of course, they care. And of course, they're very good at their jobs. But at the end of the day, no one is going to care more about people who have been lost than their friends and family. And so often, it is inspiring to see family and friends step up and tell the world about who has been lost. And sometimes even hire private investigators or search dogs or what have you in order to make sure that the people they've lost are given some kind of justice.
38:41 Speaker 00 On February 27, 2003, Chris's body was found in the Mississippi River near the 3rd Avenue Bridge. The medical examiner's office suspected Chris had drowned, but evidence was inconclusive, so they ruled the cause of death unknown. The manner of death, whether it was a homicide, suicide, or accidental, also couldn't be determined. But most law enforcement officers believed Chris had either taken his own life or accidentally fallen into the river. Chris's parents were devastated. They believed foul play was involved, so they contacted Kevin Gannon at GDI. And Kevin agreed. He believed Chris Jenkins was murdered. Kevin and his investigators
39:25 Speaker 00 pointed to a few different pieces of evidence. According to the search dog handlers, the bloodhounds had followed Chris's scent from Lone Tree Bar to a parking garage, where a small amount of blood was found. From there, the scent led to the middle of the street, and then it was gone. This suggested Chris may have been driven away in a car. The bloodhounds didn't, however, detect Chris's scent on the bridge from which police theorized Chris either jumped or fell. He was also not spotted on video footage from the bridge, or anywhere nearby for that matter. Second, Chris had a high level of GHB in his blood, higher than what occurs naturally during decomposition, according to Kevin Gannon.
40:07 Speaker 00 The evidence led Kevin to believe that Chris Jenkins had been drugged, abducted and driven away in a van, held for a period of time, then suffocated and placed in the river.
40:19 Speaker 03 I'm a big believer in going where the evidence points to, right? It's not about which theory sounds best, it's about what does the evidence fit best? And when I see things like Chris not appearing on video footage from the bridge, and this high level of GHB in his body, I have a lot of questions. I think that sounds like it could be potentially a homicide. And I would hope that investigators would very much work diligently to rule that out before dismissing it. So I tend to think, from what we know here, that Chris's death, at the very least, looks very suspicious.
40:57 Speaker 02 The obvious question that comes straight to my mind is, were any smiley faces found near the body?
41:04 Speaker 00 To date, I can't find any records of a smiley face. But in 2006, Minneapolis Police announced something shocking. Chris's death had been reclassified as a homicide. Authorities said the change was due to information gathered from inmate testimony in an interview with an eyewitness, but they didn't offer more details. They did, however, apologize to his parents for mistakes made during the investigation. Later, Milwaukee Magazine reported an informant told police a man named Jeremy Alfred had boasted about killing Chris Jenkins. And he didn't have an alibi for Halloween 2002. He was supposed to meet with his sister for trick-or-treating, but didn't show.
41:48 Speaker 00 He and his brother Luis had been convicted of the murder of a man named Douglas Miller. Jeremy and Luis killed Douglas and left his body in a burning mobile home. Later, Douglas's van was found in an Iowa River. Police in Iowa and Minnesota discovered Jeremy had ties to a gang known as the Dealers of Death, which may have had over 300 members. When the FBI questioned Jeremy, he didn't mention Chris Jenkins, but said the gang was responsible for at least 40 murders of young men in Minnesota and Iowa. Strangely, one of the informants in the case with ties to Jeremy and the Dealers of Death had the last name of Smiley, like Smiley with a Z.
42:31 Speaker 03 I will say that that is certainly an odd and slightly disturbing coincidence. Although, when I'm looking at the story of Jeremy and his alleged connection to this crime, I am struck by the fact that there is not a lot of direct evidence tying him to anything. So certainly, it's interesting that he didn't have an alibi and that he may have boasted about killing Chris. But we do know that people make claims in prison, whether those are, you know, prison house informants or people who are trying to sound tough. And so without necessarily any further information or something only the killer could have known, I'm inclined to say that it sounds like there's some definitely intriguing possibilities there,
43:16 Speaker 03 but I'm not hearing anything where I'm like, oh, yes, this guy must have been the one who did this.
43:23 Speaker 00 The FBI also didn't find Jeremy Alfred to be credible. No charges were ever filed against Jeremy or anyone else for Chris's death. And as of 2024, the Chris Jenkins case is the only one in GDI's database that has been ruled a homicide.
43:41 Speaker 00 Kevin and Anya came into this story as skeptics, two people who wanted facts to back up the theory. After dissecting the theory with them, I wanted to know, where do they stand now?
43:53 Speaker 02 To me, one thing I take away from this is to be wary of easy answers. Maybe some people look at the smiley face theory, and that's an easy answer for what happened to their loved ones. And so that isn't really a helpful way to approach the world. But on the other hand, investigators and stuff can say, "Oh, the smiley face theory, I don't believe in it. I believe all of these people are victims of accident or suicide or what have you." And that also is not a helpful way of looking at it. And if people had been too wedded to that approach, then Chris Jenkins's death would still be classified
44:37 Speaker 02 as something other than a homicide.
44:40 Speaker 03 I personally, when I look at Chris's case, I think that there is indications that that was a homicide. I don't believe it is connected to any wider conspiracy or serial killing. I think that it may very well just likely be an isolated and very tragic incident. I do not believe in the smiley face killer theory. I just don't think it holds any weight. And I think that, in fact, it can be harmful to try to connect things based on very scant reasoning and evidence. That being said, I can agree with some of the folks behind the smiley face killer theory in a few respects. And one of those is the importance of treating each case
45:25 Speaker 03 like it might be a homicide until you get information that disproves that theory. And I guess I would just add that, at the end of the day... Even if Kevin and I don't believe in the smiley face killer theory, we do think that some of these cases very well could be homicides and should be looked at and should be given the resources necessary to break them open. And even if some of these young men died by accident, it doesn't take away from the absolute tragedy that that happened.
45:59 Speaker 00 I came into this story wanting some answers to my classmate's death. But with that desire, I can see how easy it is to be seduced by theories. It means wanting to believe something, even if the facts butt up against that belief. I may never know what happened to my classmate, but I do have a better understanding of investigatory approaches and why, no matter the suspected cause of death, it's important to avoid tunnel vision. With that, I wanted some final wisdom from Kevin and Anya. Why did the smiley face killer theory generate so much interest with people? And what does it say about us?
46:37 Speaker 02 I think a lot of it is people just like a good story. And this is a good story. And you know, one thing that makes a good story is finding a monster that explains the mishaps and tragedies of our lives. It's not fun or pleasant to think that something terrible could happen to someone we care about and love and is just a random incident. It's easier and somehow comforting to think that it is because of some monster going around taking our loved ones from that. And I think that might also be part of what draws people to this story.
47:15 Speaker 03 I personally think that we live in a society where we often apply a lot of the rules of fiction to true crime. I think people tend to gravitate toward what is interesting over what is most likely to be true. And I think that's where it's important for people to kind of maybe think about true crime in a way that's, that's not just entertainment, but is also what is, what is closest to the truth? What is realistic? What is fact based? And it can be difficult to do that, but I think it's an important exercise as we engage with these real life stories of tragedies. This isn't just a story. This is their lives. And so we try to come into every case
47:55 Speaker 03 we do with a level of respect because at the end of the day, it's not just a homicide. It's not just a name. It's a person and that person had people who loved them.
48:12 Speaker 01 Thanks for tuning into Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast and we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. I'd like to thank our guests, Anya Kane and Kevin Greenlee for their insight and expertise on this episode. Their weekly podcast, The Murder Sheet, takes an in-depth journalistic view on both high-profile and lesser-known crimes. You can find The Murder Sheet wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about the smiley face killers, amongst the many sources we used, we found Case Studies in
48:53 Speaker 01 Drowning Forensics by Kevin Gannon and Dr. Lee Gilbertson, and the report Drowning the Smiley Face Murder Theory from the Center for Homicide Research, extremely helpful to our research. Stay safe out there.
49:09 Speaker 01 This episode was written and researched by Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boarow. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. This episode was hosted by Anya Kane, Kevin Greenlee, Chelsea Wood, and me, Vanessa Richardson.
49:43 Speaker 04 Stonefire Non is inspired by ancient traditions, baked on stone at blazing high heat, but it's perfect for your new traditions, too. I love putting on Stonefire Non with dips for board game night.
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50:26 Speaker 05 What? Holy butterscotch!
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