Volunteers searching for missing Middlebury College freshman Nicholas Garza discovered smiley face graffiti close to a nearby river. Police say the face has been there for years, but Garza's mother is unconvinced. Last week, someone found a smiley face painted on a tree near the Hudson River where Joshua Szostak was discovered "accidentally" drowned on April 22. Police say it's a hoax by some cruel local kids; Szostak's father doesn't know what to believe. And police in Charlotte, North Carolina are trying to assure the community that the recent disappearance of a 24-year-old man does not seem to be connected to gang activity...

With a few exceptions, most of law enforcement is denying the existence of the Smiley Face Gang. This seems pretty strange, considering the mounting, albeit circumstantial, evidence ("the drownings seem to have been staged, especially since many victims were missing for months before their bodies turned up and some corpses looked like they had been tampered with").

Add to that the fact that now it seems the only dudes we have on the case appear to be two aging, retired and seemingly obsessed NYPD detectives. It's a wonder the public -- and the media -- have remained as composed as they have!

Still, there's been a fair bit of rampant paranoia since Gannon and Duarte, the retired NYPD officers, took their story to the media last week, complete with creepy factoids. The detectives found the word "Sinsiniwa" next to one of the smiley faces in Michigan; later, they traced river currents and discovered that another body had been placed in an Iowa River at Sinsiniwa Avenue.

Now the public is busy connecting dots of their own; one Gothamist commenter even suggests late Ra Ra Riot Drummer John Pike could have been a Smiley Face victim.

At the same time, how would it look for the FBI to come out and admit that there's been a coordinated murder plot against successful young white Americans that's been allowed to continue for 10 years and claim more than three dozen lives, and which shows no signs of stopping? Um, yeah, probably not so hot.