Across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Iowa, it's the same every time: the guys are at a party or a bar getting hammered, maybe with a girl or friends, and then they're gone. A few days later, they're found in a river or a lake, and the symbol of a smiley face is found nearby...

Now-retired NYPD detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte have investigated 90 similar drownings over the past decade, narrowing them down to over 40 they suspect were the work of a "nationwide organization" of serial killers -- who use the smiley face symbol at the spots where they place the bodies in the rivers.

Considering the attention-grabbing behavior of the serial killers we're, uh, used to, this string of killings is unusual in its subtlety. The murders are all carefully crafted to look like accidents; and the deaths of young men generally get less media attention than the overplayed disappearances of pretty women. This might be how the killers have been able to work the Midwest for more than a freaking decade.

At the same time, maybe some of these deaths were accidents -- without the smiley face signature, it's very difficult to prove (especially with many of these cases gone cold).

But the disappearances have definitely been picking up lately: six went missing in the Wisconsin and Illinois area in just ten weeks in late 2007. One Wisconsin police department was so embattled by their angry local community that they reached out to the FBI for help (yikes).

In the meantime, stay safe kids: no late-night drunken swims without a buddy, and don't take rides from strangers (unless they're really hot).