Three decades. Eleven states. Over 600 bodies. Across the United States, college-aged men have ended up dead in rivers, lakes, and ponds. The deaths have been ruled accidental drownings, but a team of retired detectives believes a small, smiley-face shaped clue points to something more nefarious: a gang of serial killers. To help dissect the Smiley face Killers theory, Vanessa is joined by producer Chelsea Wood and hosts of the podcast The Murder Sheet, Áine Cain and Kevin Greenlee. Keep up with us on Instagram @serialkillerspodcast! Have a story to share? Email us at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the Smiley Face Murder Theory?
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.
Chapter 2: What evidence suggests a gang of serial killers?
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.
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 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. 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.
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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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's 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.
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. But unbeknownst to Patrick, someone was following him. As he made his way home, a van that had been double parked on 2nd Avenue tailed him. When Patrick stopped, the van stopped.
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Chapter 3: Who are the victims connected to the Smiley Face Killers?
They scoured the East River for clues. They collected tips and possible sightings, but nothing went anywhere. Patrick vanished without a trace. 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.
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. 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. 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 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 a.m. walking west on 42nd Street.
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Chapter 4: What unusual patterns emerge in the drowning cases?
According to the official report, Dakota's body hadn't suffered any physical trauma. But after consulting with the U.S. Army Corps 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.
According to Gannon, that's typical protocol in an active homicide case, not an accident. 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.
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.
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 ammo 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. 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.
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Chapter 5: How is GHB connected to these drownings?
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.
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.
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 1230 a.m., he was asked to leave the bar, though it's unclear why.
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Chapter 6: What role do smiley face symbols play in the investigation?
Chapter 7: Why do some people doubt the Smiley Face Killer theory?
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.
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.
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 the people they've lost are given some kind of justice.
On February 27, 2003, Chris's body was found in the Mississippi River near the Third 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 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' 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.
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