The Smiley Face Murder Conspiracy

Could a group of serial murderers be kidnapping, drugging and drowning young men across the United States? Scores of young male college students have been found dead in what law enforcement calls accidental drownings -- but a team of retired detectives believe there's something more sinister at work. Join the guys as they dive into the strange, twisting story of the Smiley Face Murders -- the fact, the fiction, the controversy and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back

(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt, my name is
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul. Mission control decands, most importantly, you
are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. I'm going to start
out with with something very, very honest, and it's one
of the great commonalities of our species, is this people

(00:50):
doc Whether due to accident, injury, disease, or crime, the
unexpected loss of a loved one is one of the
most harrowing events in human experience. It doesn't matter who
you are, prince, a pauper. We love people, and at
some point they or we are gone. And when people

(01:10):
are struggling in the wake of these these terrible, indescribable tragedies,
we often find ourselves desperately searching for answers. You know,
uh questions haunt us. Was there something I could have
done differently? We might ask? Or out of all of
the billions of people in the world. Why was my child,
my partner, my parents, or my friend the one to
pass away? And this intense pain worsens when survivors are

(01:37):
left with missing pieces to their stories. You know, we
we always hear about we always hear about legal proceedings
maybe for a disappearance or a crime or murder that
that go on for years or decades after the event.
And in many ways it's driven by uh surviving family
members or loved ones, not because they believe this will somehow,

(02:02):
you know, bring someone back. It's because the the experience
of closure is so much better than the experience of
wondering what happened to a child or a spouse or
a loved one. But then there's this other chilling situation,
which is what do you do when authorities have ruled

(02:24):
the death of a loved when accidental, but you feel
they got it wrong. I mean, we've we've seen examples
of that, and we know at least we can't speak
for every country, but we know that here in the
US there is a clear and systemic problem with things
being um with, with causes of death being misidentified right

(02:45):
or with some kind of malfunction in the justice system
leading to the wrong person being convicted of a crime.
The real criminal walks away and they get caught, you know, uh,
four assaults, five murders later. Yeah, Well, we also know
there are real problems within institutions where sometimes and this

(03:08):
is certainly not true of all cases, and this is
certainly not speaking ill of any individual out there who
may be listening or who is working in any of
these fields, but sometimes it is more beneficial to have
a let's say, a case be classified one way rather
than the other. That will prevent a major investigation from occurring,

(03:29):
because as far as the authorities are concerned, that closes
the book on it. They can devote resources elsewhere. And
we all know that law enforcement agencies are often quite
strapped for resources, and every agency is every we all,
all human beings out here, are trying to do the
best we can with what we have, right. I mean,
I think that speaks to most of us, especially you're listening,

(03:49):
because I'm you're you're awesome. Whoever overachievers? Yeah, well, I
mean we It's just the nature of large systems like
that sometimes you have to you have to at least
attempt to make it function at its highest level. And
to do that you have to pick and choose basically
what priorities are. And by its very nature, I'm not
saying it's inherently callous, but it has to take a

(04:12):
little bit more of a clinical approach to these things
then would be taken on the family side, which is
obviously a much more personal and emotional approach to this
idea of closure. So while the book might be closed
on a case as far as law enforcement is concerned,
that would be far from the case if a family
member thinks they got something a little off. Yeah, and
all of this is doesn't change the way those family

(04:34):
members or those loved ones feel and what they believe.
None of this, none of the realities change the way
that experience at that level. Right, it makes We can
all think of specific cases where the where in law enforcement, municipal,
maybe even on federal level, said Okay, we've figured out
what happened, is what happened in the family? UH says no,

(04:56):
this is not a satisfactory explanation. It's a matter of fact.
In the past, we've covered many examples of this, UH,
often with journalists who found something they don't want you
to know, and then later somehow died and before we
go on. You know, this reminds me. I recently rewatched
some clips of one of your favorite shows, Matt, The Wire.

(05:18):
I believe it is everybody's favorite show. Okay, right, one
of the best shows then, right, uh, backstory, Matt introduced
me to The Wire. So we would not have Luther
if we didn't have The Wire. Okay, that's also true,
that's all. We also wouldn't have Macavity, and that the
latest iteration of Cats, which is a thing of monstrosity

(05:43):
and beauty, and then everyone should experience it for themselves,
just putting that out. Yeah, I saw it to it,
and I think it is the true spiritual successor to
The Wire. It's basically the last season of The Wire,
singer Bell pirouetting around in a weird anthropomorphic g I
Cats suit with ripped abs. Yeah yeah. In in the

(06:04):
Why before the Cats season of The Wire, you guys
will recall there was a there was a ongoing plot
and I think maybe season four slight spoiler alert, you
mean with the vacants where there were bodies that were
just kind of disappearing, and I think they're the newspaper
essentially created a narrative of their own to explain this. Yes, yes,

(06:26):
full spoiler alert. Now McNulty is involved anties, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and is creating essentially or or working with this narrative, right,
the idea of creating a sort of false narrative to
get some more resources put into solving some of these murders.
Right right, right now that I think about it, I

(06:47):
believe it was season five, McNulty, one of the main
characters full spoiler alert, creates a serial killer essentially and
does this by working with the press, and he's they're
getting they're they're essentially getting more funding through doing this.
And one thing that I think struck a lot of
people about that about that move was that The Wire

(07:11):
had always been praised for its realism, and so for
something like that to occur in a very grounded show,
the implication is that this happens, you know what I mean? Now,
of course, critics didn't universally love that plot line, but
it shows us how how common this debate is, this

(07:31):
um idea that there might be some greater pattern to
the tragedy that surrounds us. Here are the facts. Unfortunately,
there are no shortages of real life cases not on
the Wire. Real life cases wherein parents or uh partners
of a deceased individual are certain that authorities, through either incompetence,

(07:53):
in difference, or even corruption, have misidentified a cause of death,
essentially that they've ruled a homicide an accident. And over
recent decades in the US, we've seen hundreds of of
these stories. One that still stays with me that I've
been doing some outside research on is the the Kendrick
Johnson case in Valdosta, Georgia. That's the basketball player, the

(08:18):
high school kid who was who was found dead rolled
up in the rolled up in a Jim Matt Yeah,
and his parents say that, you know, bullies killed or
accidentally killed him, and the authorities argue otherwise, they say
accidentally killed himself. Story for another day. Maybe maybe we'll

(08:40):
do a whole podcast series on them one day. But
this might surprise some of us in the audience. Also,
over the recent decades, we've seen one surprising source of
controversy for these debates over accident versus homicide, and it
comes in the case of drown which is an unpleasant

(09:02):
way to go, of course it really is. But I
do think it's surprising that you know, when you would
think of accidental death versus homicide, you would think of
things like maybe, uh, firearm related deaths. Yeah, exactly, Well
that's not not the case. Um. In this country, there

(09:24):
are a lot of fairly large bodies of water and
smaller ones too. They're everywhere water, it's everywhere, raging rivers,
you know, they they are UM. And people every year die, uh,
whether accidentally or not accidentally in these bodies of water,
and to a lot of people. According to the CDC

(09:47):
from two thousand five, there were an average of three thousand,
five hundred and thirty six fatal unintentional drownings. Um. And
those were not related to boating and no in know,
so not like drinking and voting and that kind of thing. Um.
And that that occurs annually within the United States. So
every year that is that's pretty crazy. It translates to

(10:10):
about ten deaths a day. You know. I just have
to say, I grew up near Lake Laniar, which is
a fairly large man made lake here in Georgia, and
it it is um, it would be surprising, maybe it
would be surprising to you, certainly surprising to me the
number of people who would accidentally drown in that lake
every year, and I was unaware of it as a kid,

(10:32):
but now when I see statistics about it, it's just
it blows my mind. And to be fair, a lot
of those do have they end up having to do
with drinking and swimming, or drinking and voting, something like that.
Um in today's case that we're gonna get into a
little later, also involves perhaps drinking, perhaps drug use, and

(10:53):
being in a body of water. I have a very
tangentially related, perhaps fun uh act for which you probably
already know, and you probably already known. No, it's this
Georgia has no natural lakes. They're all man made. Oh
so that's that's a little palate cleanser. I'm okay with that. Yeah,

(11:16):
the ingenuity of mankind, you know, on full display here
in Georgia. Yeah, but we do have some swamps, that's right,
we do have some some schwamps. Not the best for swimming, no, no,
just for swimmers. Um Ross, David Schwimmer, is that the
one he notoriously loves a good swamp. Okay, yes, swamp
Ross used to think was his name. In the pilot.

(11:38):
They changed his character a little bit. But okay, so
that palate cleanser just helps us get further into the
rabbit hole here because of those drowning deaths. When we
look at drowning deaths, an additional three hundred and thirty
two people died each year in death, So we're the
linear esque ones voting related. Of the people who die

(12:00):
about one from drowning, about one in five are children
fourteen or younger. And that sadly makes brutal sense, which
is why life fests are the law, you know, I mean,
kids under certain age are required to wear life fests
and lifeguards even in kittie pools for sure. And here's
something that was surprising to me of drowning victims according

(12:23):
to the CDC are mail that, I that doesn't make
sense to me. But let's continue on down here, because
almost fifty percent of drownings can be attributed in some
way or or in to some extent, to intoxication of
some kind or another. How do you differentiate between a
purposeful drowning and an accidental drowning? There there's the rub.

(12:46):
It turns out that proving a drowning was purposeful intentional homicide.
Proving that is very very difficult. A lot of evidence
can be washed away, And because rowning is tragically common,
and because fifty percent of drownings in this country can

(13:06):
be attributed to some sort of inebriation, law enforcement is
often it's easy to assume it was an accident because
the odds against it being a homicide statistically, you're very high.
Short of there being like a cinder block tied to
someone's leg or the like, or maybe you know, choking
marks around a neck or something like that, or some

(13:28):
sign of trauma that someone was thrown or held down
or whatever, it could very easily be ruled um an
accidental death. And again that benefits. Again we're not saying
they're doing it on purpose for being lazy, but that
absolutely is probably a desired outcome for law enforcement to say, Okay,
close the book on that. Let's move on to the
million other cases that we have just jumping through here.

(13:49):
And I know we're gonna hit on this, but the
concept if you're thinking in your mind of Okay, we
found a drowning victim, but there is blunt force trauma,
like there's evidence of blunt force trauma to the head
or something, Sure, how how can you fully rule out
that that didn't occur? Or when a fall happened, or
you know, there there, It just becomes it becomes a

(14:11):
labyrinth of you have to basically work to say this
was a homicide. You yeah, the order of conclusions or operations,
the sort of the decision tree does have when it
comes to drowning. Uh, the best way to say it
is that medical examiners have to rule out every other

(14:34):
possible explanation as to why someone ended up dead in
the water, and they have to think of, you know,
drug overdoses, right, maybe maybe a heart attack, maybe a
slip and fall and that caused blunt injury to their
head and they were unconscious and couldn't get out of
the water. And only after saying it was definitely none

(14:55):
of those things are they able to say maybe it
was murder. Not to mention the fact that unless a
body is weighted down, which would be clear indication of
foul play, it's kind of drift some distance, so it's
harder to tie it to the location where the fall
maybe actually happened, or say, oh, this is definitely where
they hit their head, etcetera. So it really is kind

(15:16):
of a perfect storm of of being able to declare
it an accident depending on in which body of water
they're recovered. And then it gets more complicated because all
of that if if all of those things somehow happened
in a medical examiner is able to say, this indicates
that it could only be a murder if that very

(15:37):
rare set of circumstances occurs. Then the next step is
to prosecute or find, you know, someone who would have
done this. And like a lot of violent crime, in
homicide murders that we know of and that are proven, uh,
the the criminal is usually someone familiar with the victim.

(15:57):
It's not just a random right, but proceed, shooters have
to prove that. They have to prove a drowning was intentional,
which means they have to build a case on circumstantial evidence.
They have to be able not just to say, okay,
the flow of the river is this, or we know
that the lake works this way. They have to also say, uh,
you know these people were fighting, uh Tammy and tamarrow

(16:21):
or whatever, we're angry at each other. Yeah, they have
to do motive exactly where there was money, there were
money issues. There was an insurance policy that just got
taken out forty eight hours before. Uh, there was trouble
with the law. And because of all of these factors,
it's very difficult to know how many homicides involving drowning

(16:42):
actually exists, and there's not much research on it. Local
police statistics, of course, are not always as well documented
as people would hope. Um, Like, consider this, Matt, you
give us the statistics of drowning. Overall proval proving cases
of drowning. According to the FBI, in seen, we just

(17:05):
pull one one year from their uniform crime report, there
were only eight homicides by drowning and that's out of
what more than three and a half thousand per year,
So they out of those that were only able to
prove the eight, we're homicides. And this bothers people in
multiple aspects of law enforcement. There's a diver less than

(17:28):
the average number of of drownings that occur per day. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's a great way to look at it. So according
to people like a diver named Andreas Afferis, who began
assisting homicide investigators with cases involving drowning way back in

(17:49):
this diver says, we're absolutely missing more than we're catching
in homicide drowning cases. A vast majority of drownings are accidental,
but many which can be the result of foul foul
play are overlooked. So they're saying they're not They're saying, Look,
I'm not saying that everybody who drowned was murdered, but
I'm saying we are missing stuff, and behind the scenes,

(18:10):
everybody knows it. Because also a lot of um, a
lot of professionals like that it's their career to investigate
this stuff, don't receive the training they need. But what
if a killer knew that too, Like, knew those stats
and knew how easily these things can go under the
radar and be ruled an accident, Because if you ask me,

(18:33):
drowning someone wouldn't necessarily be the first way you might
choose to kill somebody. It's it's it's a little tenuous, right, Like,
unless certain things are in place, how are you going
to know if the person actually died or not? Um,
it's an interesting question. But what if someone did know
and I was able to kind of fit this into
their plan? Right? What if some of these accidental drownings

(18:57):
are in fact murders, And furthermore, what if these murders
are related we'll talk about that right after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. We are
entering the realm of what is commonly called the smiley

(19:20):
face murder theory, the smiley face murders, the smiley face
killer or slight spoiler alert here killers. Yeah. This, This
theory argues that more than forty cases I think forty
five or so of fatal drownings between and at least

(19:41):
two thousand and eight were mistakenly labeled accidental when they
were in fact homicides. And that number, by the way,
as we go through this has the number of suspected
cases of fatal drowning related to this case um hasn't
necessarily grown, but the possible cases identified by some of

(20:03):
these guys has risen up into the three hundred something range, right,
And this uh, that number comes often from people who
later came to the theory and started finding what they
felt were common analogies and some of the original investigators
and some of the original investigators here's so, here's the gist.

(20:24):
The these cases of fatal drownings involved young men, college
age dudes who were found dead in bodies of water
across several different Midwestern states in the US over the
last decade, and the investigators eventually started using the term

(20:44):
serial killer, which a lot of a lot of professionals
hate because it feels a little alarmist and hyperbolic. But
why smiley face? What did they just pick that one?
We all know what a smiley faces. We don't have
to overthink that. It's like we all knew what drowning is.
Smiley face to bottom half of a circle. Oh, it
looks like a face. Well in this case UM. The

(21:05):
idea of the smiley face became connected to this alleged
UM string of murders cluster of murders UM when it
was announced publicly that police had discovered graffiti UM depicting
that that ubiquitous two dots and in half a circle
smiley face near the locations where they believe UH the

(21:30):
killer or potentially killers dumped bodies in UM at least
a dozen of these cases. Also a phrase uh sincinewa
UM was also cited as being found near some of
these areas that were being investigated in connection with bodies
found floating in water. I would like to point out

(21:52):
here that the smiley faces again, it's only in thirteen
of these identified forty something cases. But it it changes
a lot. You can go online and see pictures of
several of the alleged smiley face connected graffiti's and they
really like one of them looks like a little version
of a devil or demon. They're in varying colors, varying

(22:15):
sizes and styles. Um. It's it's interesting that it's not
a single symbol. You know, if it was going to
be just a serial killer, you'd think that it would
just be a symbol. But perhaps, uh, as we get
through here, it'll make more sense of why it would change. Right. Well,
we'll talk about that in in a few minutes as well,
the differing interpretations of what a smiley face might be

(22:39):
or what the import of it is. Let's let's look,
let's step back, let's look at the proponents, the creators
of this theory. To do so, we journey to New
York where we meet New York Police Department detectives Kevin
Gannon and Anthony d'Arte. Now we're tired. Now we're tired,
both retired and private investigators. In two thousand and eight,

(23:02):
they announced that they believed one Patrick McNeil, four year
old ford him accounting major at the time of his death.
Did not drown accidentally. But okay, what happened to McNeil
at the time, By the way, Gannon was Gannon was
a working detective. He wasn't retired yet, so me Neil

(23:23):
was hanging out in the East Side, the upper east
Side of New York City. He was having a night
of it. He was drinking. It was February sixteenth, nineteen seven.
He's at this place called the Dapper Dog that's on
East nine Street there in New York City, and he's
hanging out, he's doing his thing, he's having a night
of it. He disappears, and then later on April seven,

(23:48):
his body is discovered. He's discovered near the sixty ninth
Street pier in Brooklyn. He is floating in the water. Yeah,
so Gannon at the time specifically working in missing persons
and he catches the case. It's in the East River.
By the way, the case is ruled unintentional or accidental.

(24:09):
And this is one of those things that you know,
it's weird. A lot of a lot of people in
law enforcement or in related jobs tend to to get
a case or certain cases that that stay with them
that haunt them, you know, And this was it for Gannon.
He did not agree with the official findings, and he

(24:33):
spoke with the parents of McNeil and he said, you
know what, job aside, I am not giving up this
investigation until I find the real story of what happened
to your son. And this stays with him throughout his career.
When he retires, he enlists Anthony Darty, who is his
old partner, and he says, let's let's do this full time.

(24:57):
It's similar to in a way of to do another
UH fictional comparison. It's similar to UH Marty and rust
Coal in True Detective season one, right when they This
doesn't really spoil the story, but there's a segment where
neither of them are working for law enforcement, but there's

(25:19):
a case they can't let go and they become they're
working as p i s. Essentially, that's what these guys
do in real life. And Gannon mortgages his house, spends
his savings researching this, chasing these cases, and they start
linking McNeil's death to other cases that they feel have

(25:42):
disturbing things in common. Because it turns out that McNeil
is not the only person in this part of the
world who went out for a night partying with their
friends and was later found dead in the water. Yeah,
let's let's jump right back quickly, just to talk about

(26:03):
how McNeil is a college senior. He is uh like
a lot of the people were going to talk about.
He's pretty athletic. He's kind of at the top of
his game. Right, He's a young white male um. And
that is one of the things that ends up linking
a lot of these cases together, just one of the
top level things. So they noticed that McNeil's death was

(26:26):
similar to that of a gentleman named Lawrence Andrews. This
guy was twenty two years old. He was New Year's
Even two thousand and six. He was drinking their Grand
Central terminal and he vanished and then later his body
was discovered on February twelve, two thousand seven, also off
the sixty nine Street Pier's close to where to where

(26:50):
McNeel was found. And Gannon says that he and his
partners studied the water flow of the area and the
contours of the land, and he said, look, the similarities
between these two cases cannot just be accident. He believed
that in both cases the victims were drugged with g HB.

(27:12):
Is the day rape drug right right right that makes
you know, insensate, unconscious, unable to fight back or defend yourself.
Is it essentially like a sedative or is it more
like maybe you know what they would call it, benzo diazepin,
like a xanax or something where it kind of makes
you black out almost where you don't remember what's going on.

(27:32):
I do know it affects. It does affect memory, I believe,
and people have used it as a party drug. But
I always learned about it as as I always learned
about it as you know, a drug that creeps give
to people to sexually assault, and technically I believe it

(27:53):
is a central nervous system depressant. Anyhow, he says, this
specific substance has been given to these guys. They were drugged,
and then they were placed in the water after some
amount of time, which will become very important later. And
then these two guys learned that four young men had

(28:14):
vanished in Minnesota and Wisconsin over forty day period in
two thousand and three, and that they, like McNeil and
like Lawrence Andrews, had a lot of the similar things
that you had just described as somebody's out maybe partying
with their friends, and then they walk off, perhaps not

(28:35):
seeming to be in a state of distress, and then
they disappear. The detectives did something interesting here, and it
goes to a point you made earlier. No, they started
looking not to where the bodies were physically found, but
to where, according to their best guests, the bodies had
entered the water right and that's where they found the

(28:58):
smiley faces. And again, as as established earlier, not they
didn't find forty five different smiley face icons for every
you know, everybody that that was discovered. They only found, uh,
twenty two or twenty something at the time. I know

(29:20):
we're gonna get there, but I do want to say
that that is a as we mentioned, a pretty ubiquitous,
very low key graffiti. Everyone knows how to do it,
you know, any of your fair weather taggers. That would
be a pretty easy go to to just do a circle,
two dots and a and a half a circle, you know. Yeah,
and the guy who made this smiley face uh work

(29:43):
of genius. Really, Like imagine doing something that that important.
It's it's three lines. It's one of those things too,
where it's like such a parallel thinking type thing and
such a simple thing. I don't I I almost guarantee
there's no one like credited with the smiley face. I
actually I think there might be. Actually I think there
might be. Uh. And it maybe just because of uh,

(30:06):
just because that's the person who got it on a
T shirt and I was having a nice day. Maybe, right, Yeah,
maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Harvey ross Ball yep.
Interesting fifty years ago in Worcester, Massachusetts. Uh, an American
graphic artist. He's credited as creating this, right, I did. Uh.
I think I did an episode of maybe Stuff of

(30:27):
Genius about that. A lot of people in the US
learned about that through the film adaptation of Forrest Gump
when the guys going on his running streak and then
he wipes his face with them. Yeah. Yeah, but that aside,
it is a very very very very common dare I say,
ubiquitous icon. It's funny not to get up too off talk,

(30:50):
but you guys know, I worked on a show called
Happy Face about the Happy Face serial killer, and he
was given that moniker because he signed his letters to
the press us with that very same icon. And when
you Google Smiley Face Killer, Happy Face Killer comes up
a lot too, so they're often kind of conflated because
of the similarities in the in the in the monikers. Right, Yeah,

(31:13):
that's that's a very important distinction. These are These are,
as far as we know, not related, and I don't
think Gannon or Darte are arguing that they are. But
they are arguing that they found copious evidence suggesting that McNeil,
who again is that sort of the genesis the origin
point for this theory, that McNeil didn't just walk off

(31:36):
a few sheets to the wind and then fall in
a river and drown. They're saying that someone intoxicated him,
they drugged him. There was a car scene following him
after he left the bar the Dapper Dog. They're also
saying he had ligurature marks on his neck, charring on

(31:59):
his head and torso, and that the way his body
was positioned was inconsistent with normal drowning. So someone tortured him,
drugged him, tortured him and then placed him in the water.
They said he had been stalked, drugged, abducted, bound, burned,
and then killed and then dumped in the water. Well,

(32:22):
and you know, the one major thing that makes sense
there is that he was missing for a month, you know,
so it's he dropped off the map, he was somewhere,
and then forty days later he was found dead and
he you know, he doesn't seem like he was sitting
in the water for forty days exactly right. It seems
like he had been in the water for a relatively

(32:44):
short amount of time, right, And we see that that's
another commonality they look for in some of these cases
is the the amount of time, the gap between when
a victim was last seen and when their body was discovered.
And in some cases that's that's quite a stretch, you know.
They said that McNeil was murdered by what they called

(33:07):
the Smiley Face gang. See, because they don't believe it's
just one person. They believe there isn't a group doing this.
That's the only way they think you can explain the
the regional distribution of the murders cities across eleven states

(33:29):
since maybe even continuing today, according to them, And we
talked a little bit about the commonalities they link they
use to link these cases, but but what are they
other than you know, the method of murder, which would
be drugging and drowning. One of the big things they
noticed is that these guys were very similar with regards

(33:50):
to their demographics. These are young men, a lot of
them college age, who disappeared after a night of drinking,
specifically going out and drinking, and they did end up dying.
They also noticed that these guys are athletic, a lot
of them at least UM. The majority of these cases
were young white men who were athletic and UH. This

(34:11):
purported symbol of what you could call, I guess, a
gang or a cell of potential killers. The smiley faces
UM were drawn on walls around just twenty two of
the crime scenes in five different states, including Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio. We also have the size and shape of
the smiley faces varying UM and the paint used also

(34:35):
varying UM. Some of the faces, for example, might have
had horns, just a popular variation on that, like you
can think of like an emoji uh, like the kind
of wicked having you know, like sort of dastardly fun
mischievous uh emoji smiley that has sort of like a
smirk and the horns be a hot topic and gad
to totally. Yeah. I actually remember when I was a kid,

(34:57):
a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan, and there was a Smashing
Pumpkins T shirt for um that Melancholy Infinante Sadness album,
and it said the world is a vampire and it
had a kind of iconic smiley vampire with fangs and
little horns drawn in this exact same style. Yeah, and
Gannon the the investigator there. Even he has a quote

(35:18):
I think we mentioned this, but he calls it an evil,
happy smiley man. Right. And just for a second when
you said Gannon, I was thinking to the antagonist in
Zelda Too. It different Gannon. Gannon turned a new corner
and he left High Rule and became a p I
because he's got a lot, he's got a lot of skeletons,
and he's a tortured anti hero. Yeah, he's the main

(35:43):
bad guy I was from from the beginning of the series,
from the ones that I played. Yes, yeah, you're talking
to like early Nintendo versions are like more like recent
ones like the wind Walkers. For me, it was the
early Nintendo Uh but but but our Gannon in this
story is Gannon with G A N N O N
spelling Kevin in front of it and with a Kevin

(36:05):
in front of it. Kevin is the important distinction. They're
really quick, another little just a pellet cleans there, did
you hear they are? It seems like this is such
a missed opportunity. They're making a Zelda series. Yeah, it's
gonna be a stream took long enough, right, doesn't this
seem like that one is rife? There was a Zelda series, right,
I don't think so. There maybe a cartoon, but this

(36:25):
will be live action. Yeah? Really? Oh, you're like one
of the few video game adaptations that actually could be
really cool. Yes, I do remember watching the legend of
Zelda cartoons. Okay, I just wanted to make sure I
was remembering that correctly. Matt, you had you had mentioned
earlier that idea, that the idea of the differentiation between

(36:46):
the icons, and again the idea that there's a very
common icon. But for now, let's just let's approach it
this way. If this theory is true, it is profoundly disturbing.
And again, if it's true, there are terrified and implications here. First,
there's the possibility of multiple killers working in concert. The

(37:08):
reason that is disturbing is because despite what fiction would
have you believe. It is incredibly rare for investigators, for
anyone to find a proven case of serial killers operate, cooperating. Really,
it's um the kind of um mental disfigurement that leads

(37:30):
someone to become a serial murderer doesn't really doesn't doesn't
really predispose them to group work or group projects. There
are some, of course, there are exceptions there. Uh. Lake
and Ing would be one famous case, Henry Lee Lucas
an oddest tool. Uh once you may remember from our

(37:51):
Hand of Death episodes, Uh, and our he got a
recent mention under Samuel Little episode. So for that to exist,
for a group like that to exist, this would be
one of the first proving cases. The second terrifying implication.
They have a long career, you know what I mean,
almost twenty three years, right, And that's just that's right,

(38:13):
that's just assuming what Gannon and Darte have found is legit.
The third is, if you think about it, this is
technically organized crime at that point, because it denotes a
level of organization that serial killers have not been proven

(38:34):
to have. Lake and Ing weren't doing this, Lucas and Tools,
certainly we're not in fact Gannon has described this as
a a nationwide group that functions in in terms of cells,
similar to a terrorist group. The weird thing about that

(38:56):
is it is possible for it is possible for people
to operate in a decentralized way like this just by
using Internet forms to communicate, similar to the what was
the thing with Old Dutch the Lake City Quiet Hills?
Similar to that, you know, it's it's very easy to

(39:18):
start a group and if you're careful with your language,
to communicate things from point A to point B without
ever pining law enforcement, you know what I mean, or
anyone else, or anyone else that you don't want them
to know. You could do it right under the nose
of somebody. I mean, have you ever gone to a
form and found some stuff that seemed like it was
a code? I don't know, No, Okay, alright, well, I

(39:42):
I don't want to put you in a bad spot
there or a Facebook group right right right. But let's
say it's all true. If this is all true, then
that means those implications are necessarily true. It logically follows,
and then the next question is why aren't the authorities
doing more? Well, that's because it's a controversial theory, and

(40:06):
not everyone agrees on what's happening here. We'll dive into
the problems with the narrative. After a word from our sponsors,
we're back. So, as you said, there are problems with
this narrative. This exploring these problems, of course, should no

(40:30):
way be interpreted as disrespectful to the families, or the
victims or the investigators involved. We're just looking at all
the different explorations. There's a nonprofit group called the Center
for Homicide Research, and they attempted to scientifically debunk the
smiley faced murders or killers theory. They they came up with.

(40:53):
They came up with They had a report that you
can find online that has lawn tree list of reasons
why they think this narrative described by Gannon doesn't hold water.
And honestly, they have some good points, like we do
not have solid evidence that the smiley faces were drawn

(41:16):
at the same time the bodies were put in the water, right,
that makes sense. They also know that graffiti exists everywhere,
especially I mean, if you think about a place that
isn't visited a whole bunch, even if it's down by
a river or somewhere you know you will find graffiti.
Well that's where you're running the mill. Novice tagger is

(41:37):
going to cut their teeth is out of like you know,
the public eye, like under a bridge or on a
retaining wall, like around or like the l a river
for example, or any other body of water that's in
a mean the municipal type area, you know, like up here,
like in the New York City where several of these
cases took place. Well, they also make the exact same
point that we were just talking about, how ubiquitous smiley
faces just are as a symbol, and what a dashed

(42:00):
off thing a kid might do. You know, I want
to do a graffiti artist. You know what's the first
thing that's going to come to mind. The most simple
iconographic thing you could do is that circle two dots
in a half moon. You know, it's it's it takes
very little forethought, the easiest thing in the world just
to dash off from the top of your head, you know. Yeah,
And it also pretty clearly doesn't seem to be a

(42:21):
you know, a gang sign that because it's not matching, right,
they're so dissimilar. But they also noticed that that other
word that we mentioned earlier, sinewa, sin Cinewa. They they
note that that is a common use of graffiti, a
common thing to be written, so it appears to be
also a red herring. They're saying both the smiler face

(42:42):
and that her red herring. Then made the point that
you know how a lot of you'll see single words
written on overpass bridges, etcetera. That is typically a signature
of a particular tagger or a graffiti artist. So since
Cinewa could be one individual who travels around, maybe a
train kid or something who travels around and just does
this tag, or it could or it could be multiple

(43:05):
people who think that's a cool name, super creepy sounding, right,
you know, because grapheads and and and painters they get
they take that name stuff very seriously, you know. Uh.
It Also, it also reminds me of one of my
favorite taggers over the years in Atlanta. There was for

(43:26):
a time a guy or girl or person who did
the tag goat Ravisher, And they didn't do it in
a stylistic way. They did a really bad job, so
bad that you would think it's on purpose. They it
just looked like they have found something and in shaky
block letters, spray painted the goat Ravisher, and they were

(43:47):
all over little five points uh they had they had
some spots on the bridge right outside of our office,
and I kept thinking, Man, I love I love this
in my head. There's always some weird knowledge to doom,
like I love this dude's energy because it was really
it was right next to really really nice ornate tags
and pieces, and this guy would come by and be like, oh,

(44:09):
and that probably took them like six hours. Anyway, the
goat Ravisher strikes again. I also, like, you know, I
also love the idea that this person is clearly romancing
the goat. You know, it's really like, you know, whining
and dining the goat. It's pretty sure. It's like greatest
of all time. I think it's pretty good. So it's
the greatest of all time. So goat Rabisher if you're listening.

(44:30):
Nice work man missing on the streets. Yeah, we see you,
We see you. But sinuswat is a sin sinewa that's
s i n s i n i w a is
also common graffiti. So this nonprofit Center for Homicide Research
dismisses that as a red herring. A lot of people
have never seen a lot of people who are yeah,
it's not coming here in Atlanta, right. A lot of

(44:52):
people who are proponents of the theory feel like this
list is uh, somewhat dismissive. But the raison another great point,
which is estimating where the body might have entered the water.
If it's you know, X number of yards up or
even a mile up river from where the body was discovered,

(45:16):
it's just that it's an estimation. It can be it
can be an estimation with a high degree of sophistication,
but it's still it's never going to be a definite,
or it's it's gonna be rare for it to be
a definite. There will always be that question. They also
disagree with Gannon's findings on McNeil. They say there's no
evidence of victim trauma and the vast majority of recovered

(45:36):
remains don't show that the victims were recipients of trauma,
that they didn't have some you know, egregious signs of
a beating or something. They also point out that homicidal
drowning is incredibly rare. Again, this this is this, this
is this statement. You could you could pick a bone with.

(45:58):
You could have a problem with this one because they're
saying that homicidal drownings account for two tenths of one
percent of all U S killings. However, that number has
to be based on the very rare proven cases of
homicide by drowning, and to be a proven case of

(46:18):
homicide by drowning, remember that entire checklist of things that
investigators have to go through first. So odds are I mean,
there's no question by odds are more people have died
by homicidal drowning than the official numbers would suggest. Can
we double back really quickly to Gannon's obsession and where
you think this what the seeds of this were. It

(46:39):
was that one particular case, the family. That's it, right,
family like case. I mean, think about that. I think
just thinking about that. Somebody comes to you and you
know you're working, let's say, with them for some reason,
in in in in some ways working for them, um
as a public servant, as a part of the NYPD
trying to find her son. It's because it's aid, remember

(47:01):
it's a missing person's case for him in the beginning.
So he's learning everything he possibly can. I'm just this
is me projecting onto Kevin Gannon. But he's he's so
invested in that family and in this person that he's
trying to locate for days and days and days, and
then all of a sudden shows up dead and drowned.
And I mean, you can imagine the effect that I

(47:23):
would have on you. If the family is like pleading
with you to to figure out what happened, you absolutely can.
And this is why I could never do that job.
But does this not seem like a classic example of
someone getting a little too close to what they're investigating.
You think he got lost in the case, and got
lost in the case, and got lost in the emotion
of it all, and and needed to build another narrative

(47:46):
and maybe was looking for things that weren't necessarily there,
because when you see this list all gathered together like this,
it really does seem like he was making quite the
leap of judgment. Well, that's that's the question. So there
is more I'm gonna say, We're gonna bring up later.
There's there's one or two major things that make me
lean a little closer to thinking there's something going on.

(48:08):
But let's let's continue on this list of why it's
probably not, at least according to this one. The idea
that water washes away all evidence is somewhat of a
myth or misleading. Uh. They argue that the drownings do
not fit a serial killer motive. I do also want
to point out that, I this might be a hot take,

(48:29):
but I don't think Harvey ross Ball, the inventor of
the smiley face, is directly related. You know, I think
his hands are clean in this one, pretty sure, yes. Uh.
And then they also have confessions of confessions of people
who are incarcerated that are saying something was a murder,

(48:49):
right or saying that saying that they saw something, they
witness something leading up to one of these disappearances. The
problem with that is that it's you have to be
really skeptical when you hear the confessions of inmates. Right
the again the Lucas conundrum, right with Henry Lee Lucas

(49:12):
confessing to hundreds of murders he could not have possibly done,
not have physically accomplished in exchange for you know, perks
in life. Find little case. Yeah, oh absolutely yeah, which
is the whole reason we found out about America's most
prolific serial killer. So they also say that, in their opinion,

(49:33):
the general environment of the disappearances sound like they're more
related to accidental or unintentional drownings. They occurred at night,
they were in areas not far from bars or college towns,
and they said that, you know, people have been drinking
who stagger away from bars are more likely to walk

(49:53):
or staggered downhill because it's easier. I get that, but
that's like, this is not an open sandbox game when
when you're walking home from anywhere, you have a specific direction,
and if it's uphill, you still have to go uphill.
I don't think anybody is like, oh, my apartments at
the top of that hill, so I guess I'm going

(50:13):
the other way. And then they also say that, you know,
rivers also are downhill, and there are only a few
blocks away from the bars where these cases occur, and
that there's there there's a dearth of barriers. There are
very many fences or railings, so intoxicated people who are

(50:33):
having tough time coordinating their ambulation might just slip and fall.
That's a really fancy way of saying walking. I love Well, yeah,
I just said walking so many times. It's fair. No,
it's great, you're a wordsmith. It just stinks because they're saying, look,
drunk people when they're super super drunk, are just gonna
stumble away from that bar and maybe you fall down

(50:55):
the hill land in a river because there's no barrier there.
Oh yeah, I love that point about it being downhill
because that's just gravity is gonna like take its course. Yeah.
But these people were missing for a period of time
from a week to you know, a month, in a
quarter or something. It's like and I take issue with it,
but it feels a little victim blaming, right, Yeah, that's

(51:18):
I see. I see your point there. I see your
point there, Matt. I I agree. And they also say,
you know, saying that only males are drowning in these
cases doesn't necessarily mean as serial killers involved, which is true. Uh.
They also say that in Wisconsin, particularly the town of
Lacrosse foot patrols and police have stopped over fifty plus

(51:40):
drunk people walking essentially, and they've stopped them because they
were about to walk into the area where the river
is late at night and there are no barriers. They
can slip at fall or into traffic. I mean, you know,
who knows. There's any number of things, But again, not
no victim blaming here at all. I do want to
point out too that, um, I maybe got this a
little wrong early on when I was leaning on the
idea of killing someone by drowning them is not really

(52:04):
a sure thing, right, Like if you're just pushing someone
into a river, like, how do you know they're not
just gonna swim away or like, you know, get out.
But part of this theory is the idea that they
were drugged and potentially killed in advance of being thrown
into the river. That's that's part of it, you know
what I mean, I wholeheartedly agree and that point is
one of the things that bugs me and so but

(52:26):
there's no evidence of that though, right there's some there's
some weird stuff going on, and we're gonna talk to
there's some weird stuff. I want to hit this. They
also report on the actions of law enforcement in the
same town, saying that they've they've documented the circumstances of
at least twenty different people who would have drowned but

(52:47):
have survived. And they said, you know, in in every case,
we tried to figure out what got them to that
point where they almost drowned. Most of the time, uh,
these would be accidents. Sometimes they were dares because college kids. Right,
we were all we were all there before, or they
were attempting to commit suicide or they were again, this

(53:09):
is the most victim blamey thing they were involved in
aspects of auto assassination. This is a first for me
on this term. But I get it. It's dark. It's
Darwin's uh what is it? The Darwin award, that's what.
That's what. Auto assassination is a Darwin award. Yeah, doing
something so stupid or like, you know, reckless, that's what

(53:29):
they're saying. Well, it's also just a lifestyle that involves
utter disregard for one's zone, longevity or or personal well
being safety. Right, Like you just throw all caution to
the wind, and you clearly are not looking out for yourself.
People who weren't searching for a victim blamey euphemism would
have just said self destructive. There you go. And I

(53:51):
think sometimes, you know, as the guy who just said
ambulation a few minutes ago, we have to be careful,
especially in law enforcement reports or government reports, when you
start to see the jargon words, you know, when you
when you start to hear I don't. It's like it's
the reason that successful cults always go into acronyms. Have
you guys ever read but behind the scenes, like actual

(54:15):
leaked scientology documents, they're riddled with acronyms. They're they're like
military writing from the nineteen fifties. Yeah, I've I've watched
all of George Carlin's specials, and in every one of
them he's always got a great section on euphemisms and
how we like whitewash everything. Yeah, you're right, it is.
It is a clinical way of referring to something that
potentially is a little darker, or it's a way of

(54:38):
maybe normalizing concepts that are a little more outlandish or
a little more troubling by giving them a nice pithy
you know, like unsub for example, that's the unidentified subject
in a murder investigation. When you say unsub, it sounds
a lot more um digestible, maybe, you know, yeah, or
conspiracy theorist. That way you can ignore what uh kind

(55:00):
of drug money and international bank is moving? Oh whoa
the old thought terminating cliche exactly. But these points they
also say, as I think we mentioned earlier, that presence
of g HB in a victim's body does not indicate
whether they were maliciously drugged or whether they did it themselves.
That's true if we're exercising skepticism. But they also say

(55:24):
we don't have enough evidence to say that they were
drugged by offenders prior to their abduction. These points have
some validity, but let's just let's talk about let's talk
about the other side, because there there are several things
here that are incredibly I don't want to say they're
deal breakers, but they're they're problematic for anyone who thinks

(55:47):
that Gannon is completely just reading tea leaves. And the
first one is the one I keep coming back to,
is the the length of time, Like you said, Matt,
the length of time between when they were last seen
and when they were discovered. We didn't have great statistics
that we could dig up. Love to read him if you,
if you were listening to find him, have great statistics

(56:08):
on how long, on average it takes to find the
victim of the corpse of a drowning victim. Right, Yeah, Well,
here's the deal for me. I'm just gonna lay it
out really quickly. Um In the Rolling Stones article on
this subject that I think it came out in September
of last year. Yeah, exactly. It um it. It names

(56:31):
several victims. In particular. We we talked about Patrick Neil.
If you go to this person William Hurley, that I
don't think we actually mentioned on air here. Uh. He
was a guy who was hanging out of Boston Bruins
game in two thousand nine October eight, two thousand nine,
and his cell phone battery was really low. He's um.
He calls his girlfriend drunkenly, he's very intoxicated and says, hey,

(56:54):
come pick me up. She goes out to meet him
and he's gone. He's not there. She can't get in
touch with him. Six days later, his body is found
in the Charles River and his cell phone is smashed nearby.
They recover that. Um like, okay, So that's one right,
that's one instance here we talked about McNeil. Dakota James, Yes,

(57:16):
Dakota James. So Dakota James is interesting in this in
that if we link him to the Smiley face theory,
he's a case where something almost went wrong, where something
did go wrong for the criminals because on December he

(57:37):
called his friend Shelley. He said he was terrified. He
was wandering around Pittsburgh. He was cold, he was he
didn't know where he was. He asked that he couldn't
remember what happened. He just sort of came to and
he was walking around the area and the police wouldn't
help him. So his friend freaks out. Did he get mugged?

(57:59):
His was he in an accident? Where are you? I'll
come find you. And then she actually does find him, uh,
and he's not where he said he would be her.
She was able to use her phone to find him. Uh.
And then when she got there, she saw a dark
suv in the wrong lane facing the wrong direction. He

(58:21):
was walking out of the hotel headed towards the suv,
and she caught him. She yelled at him, hey, I'm
over here, and he goes to his car. He got it,
goes to her car, got him with her and left. Uh.
He didn't seem drunk, didn't seem drugged. Uh. He was emotional,

(58:42):
but he wasn't you know, wet, dirty, hadn't been beaten.
He said, he just became a where he was walking
on the street, had no idea where he was or
how he got there. And the last thing he remembered
was leaving his work Christmas party and then going to
an after party with some of his co workers around
seven pm, and the rest of it he didn't remember.

(59:04):
He was traumatized, didn't want to go to the hospital.
He just went home and then uh, the next day,
you know, I must have just had a crazy hangover,
living wild uh and they may have just forgotten it.
Just one friend helping out another, except that five weeks
later he vanished after after a similar night out with

(59:27):
some co workers, and his body was found forty days later.
Going back to your point, so so this sounds like
someone almost got him. Yeah, exactly, so he almost he
knew this person or he encountered this person early on,
it feels like. But the craziest thing, at least according
to Kevin Gannon, Anthony Duarte, and Lee Gilbertson, a criminal
justice professor, his body when it was recovered only showed

(59:52):
decomposition for two and a half days and he was
gone for forty days. So that's a weird one. But
that's why. Isn't that just an outlier? Maybe? Sure, maybe
that's a weird one. Okay, that's a weird one. How
about todd GIEB G E I B. He was missing
for twenty one days and according to these three guys.
He showed decomposition of two and a half days. But

(01:00:13):
I still don't see the connection. They're They're they're trying
to hang like hundreds of murders on this theory, and
there's maybe two or three outliers that like are suspicious,
and we know that people dispose of bodies and bodies
of water all the time. I mean, it's the oldest
trick in the book. But they haven't they have They've
said they believed there could be hundreds of related murders,

(01:00:35):
but they admit they can't prove it, at least for that.
And I see the point, Yeah, because for one thing
to be for one case to be a case of murder,
we have to realize one case or two cases isolated
cases could be cases of murder without inherently tying this
all in together. For law enforcement overall, people are still

(01:01:01):
pretty skeptical about this. You know, at this point, honestly,
the majority of l e os don't think the theory
has a lot of sand. The police department in Lacrosse, Wisconsin,
which is one of is in their theory. It's one
of the like primary sites for this. They were in
charge of eight of the investigations. They released a statement

(01:01:21):
reiterating their initial conclusion that the deaths were accidental or
non intentional drownings of inebriated young men, and they said
that they had found no smiley faced symbols in connection
with their cases. And so we see other agencies saying
that the FBI released his statement in twenty two thousand

(01:01:43):
eight denying any any sort of killer or uh group
of killers. The multiple sources who disagree with Gannon Darte's
theories say that we are creating a pattern where none exists,
perhaps as an emotional reaction to the um indescribable pain

(01:02:07):
of unexpectedly losing a loved one. At this point, Gannon
and Darte still stand by their findings and their research.
They insist the case or linked. They think the smiley
face killer or killers is or are still at large.
And I'm with you guys. There there are specific cases

(01:02:29):
where the official explanation leaves something to be desired. Yeah,
you know, we didn't even get into things that Gaining
believes about the lividity lividity of some of these victims,
and that that's a term that's describing the pooling of
blood and a dead body like after death has occurred

(01:02:49):
within a body, and you know, I mean, I get
this exactly right. But around sixty hours after death, lividity
occurs where blood pools, it just goes, it uses gravity
and heads towards the ground, right, and then there's discoloration
on the body where the blood has pulled and he
at least you know this team Gannon and then the rest.

(01:03:12):
They're saying that the lividity within these dead bodies is
not matching up, and it appears that they were killed
on land and then dumped in the water. So and
and here's here's the deal for me. Even if these
cases aren't linked and it's not a single killer or
a single group or something killing these people, there are
individual cases out there that appear to have enough um

(01:03:33):
questionable things about them that Gannon and those guys have
identified that some of these cases maybe should be expanded
upon or could be expanded upon. That's where I'm sitting
with it currently. I see what you're saying, absolutely, and
we have an abundance of other theories. This this is

(01:03:58):
pretty much an intro episode to the concept, right, because
we can deep dive into other theories, such as the
once popular belief that the killer or killers was traveling
via their their work right, and they were able to
use that as a cover because, of course, as as

(01:04:19):
we all know, if you want to successfully get away
with committing crimes against strangers, or if you want to
you want to murder someone and be a ghost and
never be connected to it, one very efficient way to
cover your tracks is to already have been traveling for work. Oh,

(01:04:43):
which reminds me. We're going to l a soon, aren't we. Yeah.
I know if you guys, if I told you guys this,
But I actually have a jury summons on the Monday
of that week that I'm supposed to be traveling. I'm
going on Thursday, so I really hoping that I can
either plead uh reason with the judge that there's I'm
taking my kid to this as a big part of
her birthday gift, and I have to make my case

(01:05:04):
to the judge. But also worst case, maybe I'll to speak.
I've got Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to do my public service,
so hopefully that will be enough. I don't think tell
them you believe in jury nullification and that more people
should be aware of it. Do you know what jury
your nullification. I do, and I saw that on a
message board. But I also saw a response to that saying,
and then be ready to be taken away by the

(01:05:25):
bailiff for being an attempt of court. Just say it
in a polite way. Yeah, don't I mean, don't be
don't be one of those am I being detained bro
people that never goes well? Just like and also go
quietly when the bailiff takes me away. No, no, I'm saying,
if you pose something in a respectful manner and just
gonna say, all right, this is not the guy for
this case. Also, I'm pretty sure I'm not an expert,

(01:05:48):
but I'm pretty sure you can say, you know, I
have work stuff that won't allow me to do this,
and they'll just summon you for something else. But now
we are at Now we are at the end of
the intro to the Smiley face murders. As you can
probably tell. And you may be on the same page
with us, fellow listener, We're not. We're not a percent

(01:06:11):
one way or the other. I will say that there
are there are some compelling arguments that individual or isolated
cases did not uh did not get their full story told.
But also I can completely understand the people who would say, look,
because we don't know the age of these smiley faces,

(01:06:34):
because we don't have a good definition of what counts
as quote unquote nearby, there's just not enough of a
hook to hang this belief on. But take the smiley
face away. What if the smiley face wasn't a part
of it, right? What if that was just these drownings
of young white college as males with some of these

(01:06:55):
weird things going on, impossible drugging and being missing. Would
you think they're could be any connection there? Yeah? Because
for me, I I would believe it more if you
took the smiley face and bout it feels a little
prs right. I think that's an excellent point. And we
want to know what you think. We want to hear Grotes.
There are, of course, as we said, uh, a multitude

(01:07:19):
of individual cases. Which ones stick out for you? Let
us know. You can find us on Facebook, you can
find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter.
We especially like to recommend our Facebook community page. Here's
where it gets crazy. And while we're on the subject,
if here's where it gets crazy, this is interesting. J Black.

(01:07:41):
About an hour before we've recorded this episode J you
went onto Here's where it gets crazy and said episode
request the Smiley Face Killers urban legend. The guys have
referenced it a few times, but never dug into it.
It would be great to hear their take on it. Additionally,
someone else nailed us yesterday last evening asking the same question.

(01:08:06):
So are we group minding here? I'm pretty sure because
we decided to do this a while ago. So we
also had an email come through I think yesterday as
we were recording us asking us to cover Q and
on Yeah, whoa and that we just got out of
the studio doing that. One is somebody reading our internal documents,

(01:08:30):
I mean our minds, man, that's what those are, ours,
my internal document all right, So you don't only do
any of that stuff. You can give us a phone call.
We are one eight three three st d w y
t K. You can call that number. Leave us a message.
I will hear it. We've been getting lots of fantastic

(01:08:51):
ones lately. UM. I need to do a better job
of sharing that out to you guys. I apologize to
all three of you. UM, but we oh and you,
I apologize to you. I'm not getting that out to
you either, but some of them don't want to be
got out to you. You listener, um, but that's okay. Leave,
leave your messages, will do with them whatever you ask, okay.

(01:09:14):
And if you don't want to do any of that stuff,
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't

(01:09:40):
want you to Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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