Smiley Face Murder Theory - Drunk college kids drowning, or something else?

[melty]

I came across this idea a couple of weeks ago and I think it's pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley_face_murder_theory

Basically, college aged males in college towns near bodies of water in certain states keep getting drunk and drowning at an alarming rate.

The Smiley face murder theory (variations include Smiley face murders, Smiley face killings, Smiley face gang, and others) is a theory advanced by two retired New York City detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, that a number of young men found dead in bodies of water across several Midwestern American states over the last decade did not accidentally drown, as concluded by law enforcement agencies, but were victims of a serial killer or killers. The term smiley face became connected to the alleged murders when it was made public that the police had discovered graffiti depicting a smiley face near locations where they think the killer dumped the bodies in at least a dozen of the cases. The response of law enforcement investigators and other experts to Gannon and Duarte's theory has been largely skeptical.

Proponents of the theory believe that many of the drownings are too bizarre to be accidents. For example, some of the drownings were reported to be drunk accidents, but witnesses say the victims weren't really very drunk at all. Many of them were nowhere near water when they were last spotted, and had no plans to walk by the river. Some of the drownings were ruled as suicide, but there is very little evidence that the guy in question was suicidal.

The argument against the theory is simple. Young men go off to college, party hard, can't hold their liquor, get wasted and either fall in the water or decide to go swimming and drown.

Personally, I think there is something to the theory, though I do love a good conspiracy so I'm biased. There are estimated to be anywhere between 25 and 100 serial killers active in the US, and some of them are quite prolific.
However I do think a lot of the drownings are accidental, and the smiley faces probably don't have anything to do with it, since there's not really any proof they look very similar or were put there at the time of the murders and it's a common graffiti.

It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to figure out drowning deaths per capita before and after the supposed killer appeared - like, if drowning deaths go up on one campus 500% suddenly and stay that way year after year, that would be suspicious. But I don't think anyone has done that analysis. Though according to one article, "Nearly all of these alleged drowning victims were discovered in frigid Northern climates during the winter months—a ball-shrinking climatic scenario in which even the drunkest of frat dudebros might hesitate to wander near a body of water—yet there was no discernibly similar pattern of alcohol-related drownings in the much warmer Southern states, even in summertime."

Here's some more links if anyone is interested. Leddit has some good stuff here, sometimes people discusses cases at campuses they were at and what was/wasn't suspicious about them and the way they were handled.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unresolved...aking_another_look_at_the_smiley_face_murder/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unresolved...are_your_thoughts_on_the_smiley_face_murders/

http://homicidecenter.org/wp-conten...-Brief-on-Smiley-Face-Murder-Theory-FINAL.pdf

http://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/...ory-that-connects-40-college-students-deaths/

 

[AnOminous]

Basically, college aged males in college towns near bodies of water in certain states keep getting drunk and drowning at an alarming rate.

Lol you say alarming I say charming.

 

[JU 199]

Natural selection?

 

[Ebola]

"Many of these drowning cases are likely to have involved aspects of autoassassination. Auto-assassination is not suicide per se, but a style of living with reckless disregard for one's own life."

No need to come up with other theories because this explains it best --- at least in my opinion. I know a several girls and quite a few guys who perfectly fit the autoassassination profile.

Everyone fits the autoassassination description at times, but there are a few people, like the people I just mentioned, for which it describes every moment of their lives.

In addition, I am willing to correlate autoassassination with :autism:. How many of these drowning "victims" were autistic, or at least partly retarded or considered an outcast or oddball in some way? What kind of grades were they getting, and what kinda majors and classes were they taking?

Also, I think it's only fair for me to associate the murder conspiracy theorists with schizophrenia since I just associated the dead with autism.

 

[ScrewTheRules]

I'm with @melty , I love a good conspiracy.
Seriously, though, I find it hard to believe that at least one of these deaths wasn't a murder, if only because getting somebody drunk and pushing them into a lake is such an effective murder method, is so difficult to prove as murder, and because at least one of these drunken frat boys had to have pissed somebody off.
Also, because my Alma Mater had a lake and, despite people holding regular raves with booze and drugs in those woods AND the fact that the drinking age here is 18, nobody ever drowned. Frankly, "Smarter than the people I went to uni with" isn't all that high a bar, and if I can get utterly sloshed that close to a lake without dying than so can anybody else.
Not sure if this IS a serial killer, though, so much as a combination of a large number of accident combined with an impossible-to-determine number of independent homicides.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

I'm with @melty , I love a good conspiracy.
Seriously, though, I find it hard to believe that at least one of these deaths wasn't a murder, if only because getting somebody drunk and pushing them into a lake is such an effective murder method, is so difficult to prove as murder, and because at least one of these drunken frat boys had to have pissed somebody off.
Also, because my Alma Mater had a lake and, despite people holding regular raves with booze and drugs in those woods AND the fact that the drinking age here is 18, nobody ever drowned. Frankly, "Smarter than the people I went to uni with" isn't all that high a bar, and if I can get utterly sloshed that close to a lake without dying than so can anybody else.
Not sure if this IS a serial killer, though, so much as a combination of a large number of accident combined with an impossible-to-determine number of independent homicides.

It's also possible there's a copycat killer out there but it seems like they're jumping to conclusions when they just assume things like a super drunk college student would never go near a frozen lake.

 

[Lurkette]

Going with the "cold weather" fact, isn't it possible they were both drunk and had hypothermia? The later stages of hypothermia cause one to feel very hot, even in freezing cold weather, and since your brain is slowly dying it thinks it's a great idea to peel off all your clothes. So they might have thought it'd be fabulous to jump into a lake to cool off.

Or we could just go with Occam's Razor. I mean, you can pretty much link multiples of any kinds of death together, especially going back thirty years. But I'm being a killjoy aren't I?

 

[AnOminous]

Sounds like pareidolia to me.

 

[Xarpho]

I grew up in a college town and at least once a semester there was a relatively high-profile suicide, whether it be cyanide, death by train, tall building, etc., and even more accidents resulting from stupidity. The whole "smiley face murder theory" sounds like someone's been binge-watching The Mentalist a bit too long.

 

[Cunty Boo Boo]

The OP fails to mention the reason the theory is that these are all murders is because very close by where these kids are drowning, a smiley face is found drawn on some surface. It's not just kids drowning, but this bizarre connection between each case.

 

[AnOminous]

The OP fails to mention the reason the theory is that these are all murders is because very close by where these kids are drowning, a smiley face is found drawn on some surface. It's not just kids drowning, but this bizarre connection between each case.

But smiley faces are drawn near damn near anywhere people swim. Common swimming holes in hick areas are also common places to put graffiti. This has to be the most common graffiti that ever existed. This doesn't get anywhere near proving any time some drunk hick drowns it's a murder.

 

[Heimdallr]

There was actually a case at the college I went to similar to this (A Minnesota college near the Mississippi river.) My freshman year a kid drowned and died and a smiley face was found near him. Who knows what actually happened : (

 

[Marvin]

I can't wait to hear about the PBR can murders. A bunch of college students across the country end up dying and there's mysteriously a bunch of empty PBR cans around them.

(Do college kids drink PBR? Or is that just hipsters?)

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

I can't wait to hear about the PBR can murders. A bunch of college students across the country end up dying and there's mysteriously a bunch of empty PBR cans around them.

(Do college kids drink PBR? Or is that just hipsters?)

You're pretty much on the mark.

 

[melty]

I know when I'm drunk I love nothing more than a nice refreshing winter river swim.
Idk it just seems kind of implausible.

 

[Maiden-TieJuan]

But smiley faces are drawn near damn near anywhere people swim. Common swimming holes in hick areas are also common places to put graffiti. This has to be the most common graffiti that ever existed. This doesn't get anywhere near proving any time some drunk hick drowns it's a murder.

I was about to say the same. Coast To Coast Live interviewed a detective that is working privately on this case. It was actually quite fascinating. I remember that there was a few more similarities the just the college age and the smiley face thing.

http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/12/08/shane-montgomery-victim-smiley-face-killers/

Here was a interesting article. Also this one:

http://www.red-alerts.com/homeland-...the-mysterious-deaths-of-dozens-of-young-men/

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2010/02/14/
Here you can listen to highlights of the Coast To Coast show.

Very intriguing.