There are some cases that haunt detectives the entirety of their careers. No matter what, they just can’t let go until they find the answers; solve the puzzle. But when does that search for answers start to look like grasping at straws? When it comes to the Smiley Face Killer Theory, it seems to be a very thin line between wanting answers, and wanting to be right.
It began with the disappearance of Patrick McNeill in 1997. NYPD Missing Person’s Detective Kevin Gannon was assigned the case.
Patrick had been missing since after midnight on February 17th, 1997. Patrick was a student at Fordham University, in the Bronx, and was out drinking with friends at a bar in Manhattan. Right around midnight, Patrick had gone to the bathroom in order to throw up. Afterwards, he told his friends that he wanted to leave in order to catch the subway back to campus so he could sleep the night off.
Just as he was about to leave, another friend stated that she wanted to go with him, she just had to use the restroom first. Patrick’s friends told Detective Gannon that they lost sight of him right around this time. They believe that he stepped outside to get some fresh air. When his friend went outside to look for him, Patrick was nowhere to be found.
Gannon spoke to witnesses who stated that they’d seen Patrick outside the bar at this time. They said that they saw Patrick walking away from the bar, and that he was being followed. A man and a woman were sitting in a double-parked car outside the bar. When the individuals in the car saw Patrick walking, they followed him in their car.
The witnesses managed to catch a partial plate number, but it didn’t amount to anything. Neither could detectives get any leads from the car’s description, or the descriptions of the man and the woman in the car.
As February and March wore on, Gannon’s team, with the help of Patrick’s family, mount a massive search in an effort to find him.
On April 7th, 1997, their search would come to an end. Patrick’s body was found floating face up in the East River in Brooklyn. Which was odd, considering he’d last been seen in Manhattan. Patrick was also found in the same clothes he was wearing the night he disappeared. But what caught Detective Gannon’s eye was the position of Patrick’s body. Most drowning victims are found face down, not face up.
An autopsy listed Patrick’s cause of death as drowning. The report also stated that the body condition matched with the timeline of his disappearance. This meant that Patrick really had been in the water the whole time. However, despite the cause of death being listed as drowning, the manner in which Patrick died was undetermined.
The report went on to state that Patrick had a moderate amount of alcohol in his system, but no signs of drugs. However, Gannon theorized that Patrick may have been drugged with GHB, which would have really made him feel woozy, out of it, and intoxicated. It also would have made him compliant.
Gannon went on to posit that the autopsy findings were misleading. Though the report stated that the manner in which the body was found matched up with Patrick being in the water for almost two months, Gannon didn’t believe so. Patrick’s body didn’t display any of the common signs of submersion decomposition, or skin slippage.
Gannon now had more questions than answers – mainly, he wondered where Patrick had been all this time, if he hadn’t drowned the night he disappeared. Gannon also wondered how his body was able to travel from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Getting to the East River from the bar where Patrick was last seen was no easy feat. And Patrick was far too intoxicated to willingly, or knowingly, navigate his way there.
As a result, the mysterious death of Patrick McNeill became the case that Detective Kevin Gannon just couldn’t let go. He vowed to find out what happened to Patrick. And he became all the more dogged in his search for answers when two more men were found drowned in the New York City waterways under similar, suspicious circumstances.
On New Years Eve 1997, 21-year-old college student Lawrence Andrews went missing in Manhatten. In February of 1998, his body was found in the same location as Patrick’s in the East River in Brooklyn. The autopsy report listed his cause of death as accidental drowning, but no one knows how he get in the water.
A few months later, in May of 1998, another college student went missing. 19-year-old Joshua Bender vanished from his college campus, only to be found floating in the Hudson River on May 24th, 1998. However, there are no autopsy findings in regards to this case due to the family’s request that the medical examiner respect their Orthodox Jewish faith.
At this time, Detective Gannon didn’t work the cases. However, he definitely heard about them, and took note of all the similarities between them.
When he retired in 2001, Gannon took it upon himself to investigate Patrick’s case one more time. This time, he enlisted the help of his former NYPD partner, Anthony Duarte. Over time, they begin to connect some dots, and they begin to see a pattern emerge.
As a result, they find more and more cases of white, college-aged, athletic, well-liked, men who go missing while out drinking or partying with friends, and are later found drowned in bodies of water.
While Gannon and Duarte are compiling their case files in New York, Dr. Lee Gilbertson, a criminal justice professor and gang expert at St. Cloud University, has his own case that’s piquing his interest.
In 2002, Chris Jenkins, a University of Minnesota student vanishes while out drinking with his friends at a bar. At around midnight, Chris and his friends are kicked out of the bar, and Chris is never heard from, or seen, again.
In February of 2003, Chris’s body is found floating face up in the Mississippi River. The cause of death was listed as an accidental drowning, however there was one odd thing about how Chris was found. Not only was he found floating face up, but he had his arms crossed over his chest, as if he had been posed.
Other disappearances catch Dr. Gilbertson’s attention as well, like the disappearance of Josh Guimond, who vanished from his campus in St. Cloud, Minnesota after a night or partying. Josh has never been found.
The more Gilbertson got into his research, the more intrigued he became. In 2006, he enlisted the help of graduate students in order to research every detail of cases where young, college-aged men were found drowned. In the end, he and his research team put together a list of 22 drowning that they believe might be connected.
That same year, Gannon and Duarte caught wind of Gilbertson’s research. They travel to St. Cloud University in order to see Dr. Gilbertson, and compare notes. As a result, they team up, and begin researching the mysterious drowning deaths of individuals that fit their profile – college-aged, white, male, athletic, and well-liked.
In 2008, Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson were convinced that they had a serial killer, or a group of killers, on their hands. Together, they came up with a list of 40 young men across 11 states that had been murdered by this “mysterious assailant”.
Their theory states that a killer, or cells of killers, are operating in major cities to “choose, hunt, and kill” young college men. They go on to state that they believe the killers are keeping in contact with each other through the dark web, and that they make use of GHB to make their victims more complaint. Then, they make their deaths look like a night of partying gone wrong.
Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson also believe that the killer, or killers, leave behind a particular signature. They believe that the killer, or killers, leave behind spray painted smiley faces at the scenes of their crimes.
To some, the theory, which has been named the Smiley Face Killer Theory, has a lot of merit.
For one, all the victims fit a particular profile. Two, all of the victims had been drinking or partying when they disappeared. Three, smiley faces were found spray painted at multiple scenes. Four, almost all of the victims were found in the cold, winter months in bodies of near-frozen water.
However, these similarities are mere circumstance. As such, police forces in and around the areas where Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson believe the Smiley Face Killer has struck are reluctant to give the theory much credence. While it is not impossible that some of these drowning victims were met with foul play, for many in law enforcement, it’s much more likely that they drowned accidentally.
In response to this theory going public, the FBI stated in a press release that: “we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings”.
This pushback did not deter Gannon, Duarte, or Gilbertson from their mission to prove the theory correct.
In 2009, Gannon and Duarte went on Larry King Live in order to give their now extremely public – and extremely scrutinized – theory more credence. They claimed that they now had solid evidence that Patrick McNeill’s death was, in fact, a homicide.
They claimed that Patrick’s autopsy photos showed burn and ligature marks around Patrick’s neck, indicating that he’d been strangled. They also say that fly eggs – as in, eggs from house flies – were found on Patrick’s body, and that many of them had hatched larvae, which is impossible if he’d been in the water as long as the official record states he had been.
For them, this is proof that Patrick didn’t go into the East River alive. They believe that he had been kept somewhere warm, indoors, and then later put into the water after he was dead.
For whatever reason, this information didn’t come to light back in 1997. But, between the witnesses, and the new forensic detail, Gannon and Duarte believe that Patrick is he first known victim of the Smiley Face Killer.
One problem – where’s the smiley face? There is no record – past or present – of there being grafitti of any kind, smiley face or otherwise, found at the location where Patrick’s body was found.
In fact, of the original 40 cases that Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson believe to be victims of the Smiley Face Killer, only 22 were found to be near smile face grafitti. However, Gannon claims that the smiley face is only one of 12 possible grafitti markings left behind by the killer, or killers.
Critics of the Smiley Face Killer Theory are quick to point out that expanding from one particular symbol – a smiley face – to a numerous 12 symbols feels like grasping at straws. To add to that, a smiley face is a common symbol, used by the majority of the population.
In 2010, the Center for Homicide Research released a statement, outlining 18 reasons why the Smiley Face Killer theory was incorrect.
One of the main reasons centres around the graffiti. The smiley faces, or other symbols, found along with the bodies show “variation in style, size, and timing, including some that appear to have been painted long before the deaths occurred”.
While compelling, the Smiley Face Killer Theory simply does not hold up. Despite all the critics and detractors, it keeps popping up.
Gannon, Duarte, Gilbertson, and their supporters, believe that the Smiley Face Killer, or killers, are active, and remain in touch through grafitti, and the dark web.
They believe the killer, or killers, to be behind the 2009 drowning of William Hurley, who disappeared for six days from a Boston Bruins game, only to be found floating in Charles River, as well as the 2015 drowning death of Shane Montgomery.
The Smiley Face Killer Theory was once again made news headlines in the 2017 drowning case of Dakota James. Dakota went missing on the night of January 25th, 2017, and was found floating in the Ohio River 40 days later.
Local authorities believed that this was a case of accidental drowning – and that is what was listed on the official reports. However, Gannon cannot overlook the similarities between Dakota’s drowning, and Patricks.
Like Patrick, Dakota’s body was found with ligature marks on the back of his neck, and discolouration in his fingernails that appeared consisted with someone trying to escape strangulation. Also like Patrick’s case, the damage to Dakota’s body was, for some reason, not communicated to the police.
Police also discovered that Dakota’s PayPal account had been used after his disappearance, and that he’d had a strange encounter a few weeks prior.
Police learned that Dakota had called a friend for a ride home a few weeks prior to his disappearance. When the friend picked up the call, Dakota sounded frantic, and he was sobbing. He told his friend that he was very disoriented, and that he’d lost a solid four hours of time.
The friend also stated that when she went to pick him up, she saw Dakota walking towards a strange SUV, acting as though he was about to get in. Dakota only turned away from the vehicle when his friend called his name.
The similarities between Dakota’s case, and Patrick’s are very hard to ignore. However, Dakota’s death remains classified as an accidental drowning.
As of 2019, Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson have held strong to their theory. Their original list of 40 Smiley Face Killer victims has expanded to 335. Research shows that only 70 of those cases have the signature smiley face grafitti.
Over the years, Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson have stood fast by their theory. They’ve been dogged in their investigation. However, this often has detrimental effects. Some of the families wish to put their loves ones to rest, and to move forward.
It is entirely possible that some of these cases are, in fact, homicide. However, it is also perfectly plausible that they are, as most authorities believe, alcohol-induced accidental drownings.
Despite its many critics, the Smiley Face Killer Theory persists, and is reignited every time a college-aged, white, male is found dead in a body of water.
Are some of the drownings the result of a killer, or a group of killers? Are they accidental? Does the theory have merit? Or is it simply the result of an obsessive mind unable to rest?
— — —
Like what you’re reading? Follow me on Twitter or Facebook for the latest updates!
Sources:
The ‘Smiley Face Killer’ Theory That Connects 40 College Students’ Deaths – Jim Goad – Thought Catalogue
Why Three Investigators Blame a Rash of Drowning Deaths on a Gang of Killers – Nile Cappello – Rolling Stone
Never been caught: Does the Smiley Face Killer even exist? – Bec Heim – Film Daily
Why the FBI Has Debunked the ‘Smiley Face Killers’ Theory – Caitlin Gallagher – Bustle
Crime Junkie Podcast – CONSPIRACY: The Smiley Face Killer