The Smiley Face Student Killings

The Smiley Face Student Killings
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).
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Comments

Anonymous
Very creepy! Several blogs have added A LOT of info to what the Jenkins family and Gannon had to say. The Sope-Bocks blog has a list of names, a couple of theories and lots of other stuff. I'm printing it out, so I can cross-reference what that guy has written. I think he missed some things, but he does have some of the most in depth data available right now. sopebocks.blogspot.com

Huffpo and a coupla others are developing the story, too. I think bloggers are going to break this case wide open.
Posted 04/30/2008 11:28 PMReply
Anonymous
Does anyone have the names of all 40 kids that went missing? Posted 05/01/2008 4:10 PMReply
Anonymous
new one. Several days ago in Spirit Lake Iowa a relative of my daughter in law was abducted by two men. They tied his hands, drove him to a nearby lake and then untied him. The one who tied him dragged him down to the lake and held him under until he thought he was dead. He wasn't (thanks to previous efforts to break the world record for holding your breath under water!) I am hitting a dead end trying to get anyone to listen to me. The FBI said it wasn't there jurisdiction. The family thinks it was just some local person! Any ideas on who I can contact with this? Posted 07/28/2008 4:07 PMReply

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