Active Serial Killers: They're Not All Gone

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We do not have any evidence that there is a
serial killer loose in Houston, Texas. Let me say that again,
there is no evidence that there is a serial killer
loose on the streets of Houston.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Rumors have been spreading across TikTok and Instagram about a
so called buy you killer in Houston. Six bodies have
been pulled from the city's byus in less than two weeks,
and the speculation is rampant.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Right now.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
We're going to break down what may really be happening,
the fact that fears, what investigators are saying, and we're
going to do it with criminologist doctor Debbie Goodman. Welcome
to Sidebar presented by Law on Prime.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
I'm Jesse Webber.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Is there a serial killer in Houston? It's a pretty
scary thing to be thinking about, right because people have
been talking about this all over social media. On TikTok
videos warning about a so called by you killer, they
are racking up of thousands of views right now. On Instagram,
the rumors have turned even darker, with one popular account posting.

Speaker 5 (01:06):
This, somebody's gone around for Medican girls.

Speaker 6 (01:10):
Men.

Speaker 5 (01:12):
And even them in the good been by you, Raised
by you? Uh, It's a bunch of bad Hey, CHICKI
for your family, man, anybody look out for their family.
So somebody's going around and killing people all this week,
money toul they went into the crowd.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Now, posts like this went absolutely viral after six bodies.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Six bodies were pulled.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
From Houston's yus within just days of each other. To some,
it felt like you know the plot of a true
crime documentary, right. But when city leaders they stepped up
to the microphone during a press conference, they were crystal.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Clear, we do not have any evidence that there is
a serial killer loose in Houston, Texas. Let me say
that again. There is no evidence that they it's a
cereal killer loose on the streets of Houston.

Speaker 7 (02:04):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who's ever said I
would have known Ted Bundy was a psycho. I'm Danielle Scrima,
and you were listening to Broad's next Door, Put down
your true crime coloring book, turn off that third rewatch
of Mine, hunter, and triple check your locks. Because today
we're getting a broader understanding of active serial killers. Maybe

(02:29):
they didn't go extinct, Maybe they changed their ways just
enough that we stopped noticing Hi Hello, how is everyone?
I hope you are doing well, or at least not
being followed into a parking garage by someone who seems

(02:52):
eerily calm. Today's episode is a little bit different. We're
not talking about Jeffrey Dahmer's glasses or the psychology Ed Kemper.
We're talking about the now. Because while Netflix has made
a buffet of the past worst men ed Gean Dahmer BTK,

(03:12):
we seem to forget these people are still out there,
still watching, still following, still killing, but now they've adapted
to a world with doorbell cameras, automatic license plate readers,
and a public that no longer pays attention unless there's
a trailer attached. We like our killers archived, not active, dead,

(03:37):
not digital, cold cases, not current. But that's a myth,
and today we're breaking it wide open. So where have
all the serial killers gone? Let's start with that, because
it's the question everyone asks, usually with a smug Well,
obviously we solved that right. Serial killers aren't as common anymore.

(04:01):
It's a modern miracle. We caught them all. DNA and
surveillance and profiling worked. Not exactly. There may not be
three hundred active serial killers like there were in the
nineteen seventies, but there's still at least fifty active serial
killers at any given time within the United States. According
to the FBI, serial killers didn't disappear, they evolved, They adapted,

(04:27):
and maybe the people hunting them got distracted. DNA and
tech did change the game, but only partially. It's true,
DNA analysis has changed everything. The Golden State killer was
caught in twenty eighteen using familial DNA, decades after the crimes.

(04:47):
Genetic genealogy turned jedmatch into a modern day crystal ball.
Even cold cases from the nineteen seventies are getting solved
now because someone's niece or nephews spit into a twenty
three and meat tube. But here's the thing. DNA only
works if you have enough DNA to test. It only
works if the killer left behind something testable and enough

(05:12):
of it, And it only works if the killer is
in the database or related to someone who is. This
is why the yogurt chop murders weren't solved until just
a few weeks ago. So the new generation of killers,
they know all of this stuff, They plan around it.
They wear gloves, they don't ejaculate, they drive stolen cars,

(05:34):
or they use ride chairs, they use burner phones. They
live in that shadow zone between analog brutality and digital avoidance.
We're surrounded by cameras, but are they picking up everything?
We tell ourselves we're safe because of ring doorbells, CCTV

(05:54):
and AI enhanced license plate readers. But the truth that
footage sits in cloud purgatory until someone knows to look
at it. Police don't often check it unless a body
is found and the public is desensitized. A missing person
flyer used to send chills down a neighborhood. Now it's

(06:14):
an Instagram story we swipe past. Murder rates have shifted,
but serial killing isn't just about numbers. FBI definitions are
flawed in this way. They define a serial killer as
someone who kills three or more people with a cooling
off period in between. But what about interstate drifters who

(06:35):
switch mos like a lot of the people who have
been caught through DNA or multiple unsolved homicides in a
tight region with no clear connection because the killer doesn't
want there to be one, and the ongoing problem of
police departments not talking to each other, so these patterns
going unnoticed. Did serial kill just to become school shooters.

(07:03):
You'll hear this theory a lot. Mass shootings replace serial killings.
It's the same psychopathy, just compressed, but it's not. It's
a different expression of the worst kind of violence imaginable,
but it's still different motives. Serial killers want control, they

(07:24):
want to relive it. Mass shooters want to go out
in a blaze of chaotic rage. So I don't really
think this is a pivot. I think it's a completely
different pathology. Ted Bundy didn't want to die in a
haale of bullets. He wanted you to let him in.
And there are some traits that many serial killers old
and new share. This is from Grunge on YouTube. This

(07:49):
a disturbing trait that almost all serial killers share.

Speaker 8 (07:54):
Judging by the sheer amount of documentaries and podcasts on
the market, it's safe to say the true crime has
become an obsession for many. Serial killers especially have attracted
the attention of the morbidly curious. Here's a look at
the traits most serial killers have in common. Most serial
killers suffer from some kind of personality disorder, usually psychopathy
or antisocial personality. The difference between these two disorders is

(08:17):
simply nature versus nurture. For example, a psychopath's brain has
underdeveloped impulse control and emotional centers from birth. By contrast,
antisocial personalities are learned and usually developed during an abusive
or neglected childhood. However, neither of these disorders equals insanity,
which is why the not guilty by reason of insanity
defense rarely works for a serial killer. Killers deemed criminally

(08:39):
insane are not mentally able to discern right from wrong.
Serial Killers, however, know very well how evil their actions are.

Speaker 7 (08:45):
They just don't care. In his book so far, very
similar to school shooters, though a.

Speaker 8 (08:51):
Real life monster is criminal. Investigator Stephen J. Genangelo calls
the calm, purposeful behavior of a serial killer predatory aggression,
comparing it to the aggressive behavior of carnivores. Predatory animals
kill simply to satisfy a need. There isn't any rage
behind the action. In other words, while other killers may
kill because they are provoked, a serial killer kills because

(09:11):
he truly believes he needs to. A person who has
a predatory aggressive personality believes other people are inferior, which
makes it easy for him to justify hurting or praying
on others. Serial killers don't have normal human empathy, but
they're very good at pretending like they do. Therefore, it's
up to the rest of us to learn how to
recognize fake empathy when we see it. Simply put, if
your instincts tell you someone is just going through the

(09:33):
motions when it comes to exhibiting empathy, love, or concern,
your instincts are probably correct. Listen to your gut.

Speaker 7 (09:39):
Is this hard for anyone else to? If I see
someone and they look like they're trying to be empathetic,
I usually believe them better to be safe than sorry.

Speaker 8 (09:48):
Most of us live our lives believing that the person
sitting next to us couldn't possibly be a serial killer.
That kind of stuff only happens in movies or to
other people. We think we'd know if one of our
loved ones was actually an undercover monster. However, the terrifying
truth is that serial killers are incredibly skilled at twisting
perception and controlling those around them. Like Marionette's, they prey
on the insecurities of those closest to them and masterfully

(10:10):
manipulate loved ones to never suspect them of any wrongdoing.
That's why the families and friends of serial killers are
always shocked to discover the person they thought they knew
is evil incarnate.

Speaker 9 (10:20):
Just can't be. I keep shaking my head saying, how
can this be?

Speaker 7 (10:23):
Because we get lots of.

Speaker 10 (10:25):
Friends, a very good student in school, a very normal,
active boy.

Speaker 8 (10:30):
According to Psychology Today, Jeffrey Dahmer's father simply accepted his
son's lies at face value because it was easier for
him to believe the lies than to admit to himself
that his son was a monster. But even those of
us who aren't already emotionally invested in a relationship with
a dangerous person can be manipulated. Generally speaking, if someone
appears to try and bribe you or distract you from
flaws in a story using flattery, flowers, or gifts, you

(10:51):
should definitely keep your guard up. Abuse during childhood is
not a direct path to serial killerdom, but many serial
killers were abused as children. A Radford University study looked
at the childhood experiences of fifty serial killers and discovered
that sixty eight percent of them had experienced some type
of maltreatment, either physical, sexual, psychological, or neglect. An earlier

(11:12):
study even reported that one hundred percent of serial killers
studied had suffered some kind of abuse in childhood. David
Hoser of Childhood Trauma Recovery says psychological abuse in particular
has a strong correlation with future behavior. Children who are shamed, humiliated,
or punished disproportionately can develop a propensity for cruelty as
a direct result of that abuse. Neglect is also a

(11:32):
huge factor, as when children don't experience empathy from a
parent or caregiver, they sometimes don't develop the ability to
empathize with others. People who feel their own lives are
out of control will sometimes look for smaller, more manageable
situations to attain complete control over. If the person lacks empathy,
that need for complete control may involve other human beings.
Childhood abuse isn't the only factor in a person's past

(11:55):
that can lead him to develop that oversized need for control.
Kids who come from unstable homes, move frequently, or bounce
around between foster homes may feel like they have no
control over their lives and therefore no time to develop
real relationships with their peers. Not only do these children
develop control issues, they also grow up with deficiencies and empathy.
Combine this lack of empathy with a pathological need to

(12:17):
control others, and you got yourself a deadly combination. Serial
Killers almost always lack remorse. That's not really surprising, since
the ability to repeat a brutal crime sort of depends
on not feeling too bad about the first brutal crime
you committed.

Speaker 7 (12:29):
Help I like that, they say, almost always and not never.

Speaker 8 (12:33):
However, a lack of remorse isn't necessarily specific to psychopaths
and sociopaths. People who have fairly ordinary psychological makeups can
also kill without remorse, provided they can successfully compartmentalize and
dehumanize the people they kill.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
It rubs the motion on its skin, or else it
gets the hose again.

Speaker 8 (12:52):
But most of the time, lack of remorse is directly
related to a killer's lack of empathy. If you're unable
to empathize with someone who is afraid or in pain,
you probably aren't going to feel much remorse about ending
a person's life. According to psychology today, the most common
type of serial killer is the power control process focused killer.
John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and the BTK killer Dennis

(13:12):
Rader all fall into this category. Power killers can be
said to have a sort of God complex. They kill
slowly because the ability to decide how and when their
victims will die makes them feel empowered. Most killers who
sexually assault their victims aren't motivated by lust. They're motivated
by the feeling of power they get from the act.
One of the FBI's favorite techniques for interviewing serial killers

(13:32):
is flattery. Psychopathic killers, in particular, tend to have a
grandiose sense of their own self worth, so investigators can
use praise to get them talking. According to behavioral analysts,
psychopathic serial killers don't respond to altruistic interview themes, meaning
that trying to make them experience guilt or sympathy for
their victims is a waste of time. Instead, interviewers might
praise them for their intelligence or for their skill at

(13:53):
outwitting investigators.

Speaker 7 (13:55):
And unlike school shooters, they don't all try and do
something where they will get caught or kill themselves. They
will represent themselves in court. They will hold on to
their lies until the very end. Maybe that's why we
tell ourselves we'd know if there were more serial killers today,

(14:16):
But would we Let's talk about some current things happening.
The body's piling up in Houston. If you listen to
the intro of the show. You heard a little bit
about that. The disappearances of young men in bars, cars
and woods. This Portland serial killer that police denied even
when I personally asked for comments. This smiley face killer

(14:40):
theory that won't die because maybe it's not wrong. The
quiet unraveling horror across New England, one suitcase of bones
at a time. This is from the Law and Crime Network.
We'll be hearing a good amount from them today.

Speaker 11 (14:56):
Is there a.

Speaker 7 (14:57):
Serial killer in New England?

Speaker 11 (14:58):
Law enforcement says no, oh, but online chat groups say yes.

Speaker 10 (15:02):
At first six rumors of a New England serial killer
are spiraling online.

Speaker 12 (15:07):
Several bodies have been discovered.

Speaker 5 (15:09):
We begin now with.

Speaker 8 (15:10):
The follow up the rumor circulating on social media regarding
an alleged serial killer here in New England online online media.

Speaker 13 (15:17):
Thirteen bodies, three states. One terrifying question. Is a serial
killer hunting in New England. The discoveries came fast and
without warning, bodies turning up in rivers, near trails, and
deep in the woods, each scene more disturbing than the last.
As the body count rose, so did the fear. But

(15:39):
when the public demanded answers, they got silence, speculation, and
then another victim. This isn't a movie, It's not just
an online theory. These are real people, real families, trapped
between public suspicion and official denial. In this video, we
separate fact from rumor to answer one question, what's really happening.

Speaker 14 (15:59):
In New England?

Speaker 7 (16:00):
And we will get to that in a little bit. First,
let's go to where I am right now, Portland. We
were told it was nothing, but bodies kept churning up.
Portland is beautiful, weird tattooed, the city of naked bike rides,
brunch weightless and protests with better graphic design than most

(16:22):
national campaigns.

Speaker 9 (16:24):
Here.

Speaker 7 (16:25):
This is a place that prides itself on being aware,
on knowing better. So imagine what happens when a city
like ours starts finding dead women, one after another, in parks,
along roadsides, in alleys, all within a few months. Now,
Imagine the city says there's no serial killer, there's nothing

(16:47):
to see here, even as the numbers say something else.
Kristin Smith twenty two, disappeared in December twenty twenty two,
found in February rigidly and Webster thirty one found dead
in Polk County Ashley Reel twenty two, last seen leaving
a MAX station in April twenty twenty three, found in

(17:09):
a wooded area in May. Joanna Speaks thirty two, discovered
in Ridgefield, Washington. Head trauma was noted. At least six
women were found in suspicious or undetermined circumstances in the
spring of summer in twenty twenty three, and for months
the narrative from law enforcement was no reason to believe

(17:29):
they're connected, nothing to worry about, just a tragic coincidence,
a rough patch. It's not what it looks like, much
like they said in New England, not a serial killer,
but it looked like exactly what it was, a pattern.
Portland Police issued a statement in June twenty twenty three
saying they'd see no evidence that the deaths were connected.

(17:52):
The public took a breath, but just weeks later, the
Moltnoma County DA released a very different statement. They had
reas to believe at least four of the deaths were
connected after all, and a suspect had been identified, Jesse
Lee Calhoun, a thirty year old thirty eight year old
man with a long rap sheet. He had been released

(18:12):
early from prison thanks to a twenty twenty one clemency
effort endorsed by Oregon Governor Kate Brown during COVID related
sentence reductions, and now he was linked to a string
of dead women. Let me break the fourth wall here
for a second, as I often do, because when I
live here. Because I live here, and because when the
story started I made episodes about it. I reached out

(18:36):
to law enforcement, to city officials, to the victims' families
on Facebook group. I wanted to include a local perspective
for the show, and when I got from officials was nothing.
Stone called silence, a non answer from the PPEB basically
saying we have no comment at this time, and that

(18:57):
within itself was a comment. Here's the thing. It's not
always a cover up. It's often something worse. Its reputation,
manment management, its liability avoidance, its tourism seasons. Cities don't
like to say serial killer, because then they have to
admit something's wrong, that something slipped past them, that there's

(19:18):
someone out there slipping through the cracks that they created.
In Portland's case, they told us nothing was wrong until
it was politically safe to admit it, until a suspect
was in customy custody until his statement could be controlled.

Speaker 6 (19:35):
Good evening and welcome to the six o'clock News on
pep Feriuman. First on Fox, a man accused of killing
three women and dumping their bodies throughout the Metro area
is now facing an additional murder charge. We have first
live local team coverage. We begin with foxtell's Spencer Shot,
who spoke with the mother of the latest victim added
to the list of women. Jesse Calhoun is accused of killing.

Speaker 15 (19:56):
Spencer Yeah, Nissa Smith says that she's been waiting for
this announcement for years. Her daughter Kristin Smith was reported
missing and found dead back in twenty twenty two, and
Jesse Calhoun has been a person of interest in this
case for years, but now the DA's office says they
have enough evidence to finally charge him with her death.

Speaker 16 (20:18):
It's been along agonizing eight hundred and ninety eight days
since the day I found out Kristin.

Speaker 9 (20:25):
Smith was deceased.

Speaker 15 (20:26):
For more than two years, Melissa Smith has been waiting
for answers after her daughter's body was found in a
wooded area in Pleasant Valley last year. When Jesse Calhoun
was indicted for the deaths of three women, Charity Perry,
Bridget Webster and Joanna Speaks. Melissa Smith was there to
support the other families, but was disappointed her daughter was
not included.

Speaker 16 (20:44):
I can't explain the agonizing pain I thought that day
that Kristin.

Speaker 9 (20:48):
Was not one of those girls.

Speaker 16 (20:49):
I stood strong with the other families and was happy
they got their answers, and prayed every day this day
would come for me, for us.

Speaker 15 (20:58):
On Tuesdays, the Moltnoma County District Attorney Nathan Basquez announced
Calhoun will also be charged with additional counts of second
degree murder and abusive A corpse for the death of
Christen Smith.

Speaker 7 (21:08):
Is Jesse Calhoun, the only one right now. Calhoun is
the only name we've been given. He's facing indictments in
more than three of the deaths. But what about the others?
What about the overlapping timelines, the similar dumb sites, the
eerily consistent victim profiles. A grand jury did decide to

(21:29):
indict him on all of these murders last month, and
I don't know what's worse, a serial killer on the
loose here or a system that sees women's death as
an inconvenience and I honestly feel like it's the second one.
Now that we've grounded ourselves in something horrifyingly real, let's drift.

(21:52):
Let's move further into the shadows, into the strange and suspicious,
because in cities across the country, there's another one that
connects dozens of young men found dead in water with
eerie symbols left behind Miley faces killer theory. Is this
a pattern or is this internet paranoia? They said he

(22:15):
was drunk, that he fell in, that it happens, but
it kept happening. Imagine this. You're a college aged man.
You're out with friends, celebrating mid terms or an anniversary
being over, or a game day win, or just being
young and invincible. You're seen leaving a bar, and then

(22:36):
you're gone for days, sometimes weeks. Your family and friends
search for you, until you're found in a river downstream,
no sign of trauma, no obvious foul play, The cause
of death almost always the same, accidental drowning. Now imagine
it's not just you, it's dozens of men across twenty

(22:59):
five cities over the span of more than twenty years,
and near where some of these bodies are found painted
on the walls or underbridges. There's a familiar image, a
smiley face. This is from oxygen.

Speaker 10 (23:28):
The drowning deaths of college age men left it an
im questioned on Kevin Gannon, a retired New York Police
Department detective who decided to investigate the cases further.

Speaker 7 (23:36):
But it wasn't the only mark left behind.

Speaker 10 (23:38):
Gannon and a team of investigators noticed smiley faces and
other types of graffiti at some of the scenes where
alleged victims were found or where they went missing.

Speaker 17 (23:46):
What we've said time is a well structured, organized gang
with cells and major cities across the United States.

Speaker 7 (23:52):
Whole trunk of the hall the victims for a.

Speaker 17 (23:55):
Period of time alive before they marted him and then
placed them into the water.

Speaker 10 (23:59):
Here's a lot at the time line of the investigation
of the smiley face killer theory.

Speaker 17 (24:03):
So me has started in nineteen ninety seven with the
Patrick McNeil case, when I was a supervisor in the
Missing Parson squad.

Speaker 10 (24:09):
Gannon says he found elements of the Fordham University students
drowning as suspicious, which pointed.

Speaker 7 (24:14):
Towards human involvement.

Speaker 10 (24:15):
Although he was still working for the NYPD Missing Persons
Unit at the time. He made a promise to the
McNeil family that when he retired he would look into
the cases further, and it's a promise he kept. After
retiring in the early two thousands, Gannon enlisted the help
of another retired detective, Anthony Duarte.

Speaker 15 (24:31):
He knew what he was onto and he wanted to
stick to it, and he wanted to get justice for
the families and to.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Show also to the authorities that these are not just
drunk kids falling into the river.

Speaker 10 (24:40):
While they have to go to the bathroom, that they're
being targeted. Along with the three drowning cases in New
York that sparked Gannon's interest, the team says that they
started to see drowning clusters in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.
Lacross saw at least eleven droughting deaths since nineteen ninety
seven for college aged men.

Speaker 18 (24:55):
The first case for me was in February two thousand
and six was Scott Rae. He was a student at
our campus. He went missing.

Speaker 10 (25:03):
Gilbertson began looking into similar cases with the help of
his students.

Speaker 18 (25:07):
So they started reading through and I said, oh my god,
there's a pattern.

Speaker 10 (25:09):
Here, his students first thought of the killings as the
work of the Interstate ninety four killer. According to Gilbertson,
it was an urban legend at the time of a
killer working their way across the interstate. Later that year,
Gannon and Duarte linked up with Gilbertson to begin working
together on the cases.

Speaker 17 (25:23):
We went out there Shane information that we realized it
wasn't just a single long killer, because they couldn't be
doing all the same nights in different cities unless they
were some type of group organization, a gang.

Speaker 9 (25:34):
As we would probably put together.

Speaker 10 (25:36):
That same year, Minneapolis police reclassified the drowning death of
Chris Jenkins, who was found dead months after disappearing on
Halloween night. It was changed from accidental drowning to homicide.
Police cited a new tip from a potential witness as
the reasoning.

Speaker 7 (25:49):
Other clusters of drownings.

Speaker 10 (25:50):
The team says they found stretched from cities like Chicago
to Boston.

Speaker 18 (25:54):
The victims, for the most part extip the ones that
went to school at Northwestern. The victims in Chicago are
all from other cities where we have victims like Saint Cloud,
East Lansing. And then it's when they came to Chicago
to watch a sporting event or something like that in
the order celebrate New Year's That's when they ended up victimized.

Speaker 10 (26:14):
With cases as recent as twenty seventeen, the team points
to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as the latest plust to another retired
OLIPD detective, Mike Donovan, has also worked on the case
with the team.

Speaker 14 (26:24):
We're hoping to get some type of pressure to at
least have these cases looked at again.

Speaker 10 (26:29):
If you want to learn more, watch Oxygen's true crime
series Smiley Face Killers The Hunt for Justice and stay
with Oxygen dot com for breaking.

Speaker 17 (26:38):
An NYPD retired detech nostalgist. After twenty year of multiple
units in the NYPD, multiple investigative units in the in
the NYPD, I'm probably most known now for this Smiley
Face Killer theory that is all over the internet. The
Smiley Face Killers on a group of well shols. You
have organized individuals have sales.

Speaker 19 (26:59):
Throughout the United States in which.

Speaker 17 (27:01):
They're targeting specific young men, very intelligent, athletic. They drugged them,
abduct them, holding for periods of time before they murdered them,
and then disposing of my bodies of water and leave
graffiti behind most importantly the smiley face to tell us
that these as are not accidents but are clearly homicides.

Speaker 20 (27:20):
When we first started, it was just in the Upper States,
but it's nationwide and it's a group of killers. They
used the internet to talk to each other. We've been
on their websites. We know that they exist.

Speaker 7 (27:31):
It's not just.

Speaker 20 (27:32):
One individual traveling across the country killing people. It's groups
of individuals who are coordinated.

Speaker 17 (27:38):
So the only way to bring this forward was finally
to bring it to television where the public at see
and hear what's going on with these young men. How
they're going out missing, how they're being drug how they
being the positive in the water. How is it all
happening in the winter time when nobody's around, but nobody's
drowning in the summertime with these young men. The public
when we said, wait a minute, that sounds suspicious to me.

(27:58):
Something must be going on, might be on the stuffing.
Forget about who's killing them at this time. Let's prove
murder first, and we'll show you who's doing it and
why they're doing it. And for me, this was like
the last chance to bring this forward.

Speaker 12 (28:15):
Take a look at that piece of log tree coming down,
You'll notice.

Speaker 13 (28:19):
That the discolouration on the top.

Speaker 7 (28:21):
That means it was debarked.

Speaker 13 (28:23):
So coming through.

Speaker 11 (28:24):
That dam up there it was.

Speaker 7 (28:26):
They're talking about the body of Dakota James, which was
dumped in the Ohio River or he fell in the
Ohio River, either held.

Speaker 12 (28:33):
Up in the chamber and it rotated, or when it
came through it Literally the power of the water debarks it.

Speaker 14 (28:40):
If Dakota went through the dam, it would be very
difficult to if to wind up not damaged, that's fairy god,
unless it looks like all about the boat rap.

Speaker 7 (28:55):
Right, And I'm going to link to this in the
show notes. But they do go through many of the
men who went missing and were found dead and the similarities.
So the detectives you heard from, Kevin Gannon and Anthony
Duarte in the early two thousands, they meet up. They're
both two former NYPD detectives, and they begin to suspect

(29:18):
a connection between a string of deaths being written off
as drownings. The victims were mostly young, white, athletic academic
last scene leaving a party er bar near water. Gannon,
Duarte and a criminal justice professor named Lee Gilbertson proposed
to theory that these men were not drunk and clumsy,
that they were being targeted, that their bodies were placed

(29:40):
in the water, not stumbled into, and that the smiley
faced graffiti found near at least a dozen scenes wasn't
just a coincidence. It was a signature calling card, or worse,
a symbol of a network, a possible group of killers.
Let's talk about the face. It's simple, two dots, one arc,

(30:02):
a yellow circle. But the thing is smiley gray face
graffiti is everywhere. Some of the ones in this theory
are creepy. Sure, one has horns, another is distorted. A
few were allegedly found in locations not visible to the public,
as if meant only for the killer. So critics argue,
you can find a smiley face near almost any urban

(30:24):
location if you look hard enough, and you know what.
They're not wrong. If I find a smiley face under
your local overpass, that doesn't mean you're next, that doesn't
mean a murder happened there. But the pattern in context
is unnerving. And the investigators pushing this theory aren't some

(30:44):
Reddit randos with red string. They're former cops, current detectives. Academics.
They've mapped this out, they've tracked it. They believe something
is happening, even if it doesn't fit into the Netflix
or red one man in a van mold? What does
the DNA tell us here? In some cases, toxicology results

(31:07):
didn't add up. GHB, also known as the date rape drug,
was found in men with no clear explanation, inconsistent levels
of alcohol, not enough to explain a fall or drowning,
and no water in lungs, with a lot of the
victims suggesting they may have died before entering the water,
and yet no definitive DNA matches, no confirmed suspects, no

(31:31):
charges brought in the Smiley Face cluster. Why because evidence
deteriorates quickly in water, and because if there is a
group of coordinated killers doing this, I honestly have no
idea here. I've gone back and forth with the whole
Smiley Face thing. But if there is, they're smart. They
know how long to wait, they know how to blend in,

(31:54):
and they know what makes people stop looking. In two
thousand and eight, the FBI released a statement saying they
found no evidence the serial killer organized group. They called
it a conspiracy theory, a misreading of accidental deaths, tragedies, yes,
but not serial murders. But here's the thing about the FBI.
They have a vested interest in not declaring national level

(32:17):
serial activitily unless they have air tight proof. They've made
a lot of mistakes in the past, and if they're wrong,
it's a disaster, and if they're right, it can be
even worse. So in a lot of cases, it's easier
to say, as many local law enforcement do, coincidence, but

(32:38):
we cling to patterns. There's a reason this theory won't die.
It touches something primal, the fear of being watched without knowing,
the idea that someone who are multiple someone's or an
organized group of multiple someones are preying on the people
who least expect it, that even if you do everything right,

(32:58):
it might not matter. And there's something more sinister here.

Speaker 9 (33:03):
Too.

Speaker 7 (33:04):
Many of these cases weren't taken seriously, not because the
victims were young women, but because they were young men.
The assumption he got too drunk, he was reckless, he
wandered off boys of will be boys. Whether or not,
the Smiley Face killer is real in the way that
we think it functions as a framework to examine institutional failures,

(33:27):
victim blaming, and the cultural myth that always persists. It
couldn't happen here. It gives shape to something shapeless, and
that's always the real terror, that there is something happening,
but no one will ever connect the dots because doing
so would mean facing what we ignored, and that brings

(33:49):
us to the other vanishings of young men. They always
say the same thing. He was drinking, He must have
wandered off. It's a tragic accident. But what if it's not.
There's a script we've all heard. A guy in his
early twenties goes out with friends. He's smart, kind, maybe
on the football team, maybe a nursing major, maybe just

(34:10):
a guy who shows up for people. Then he's gone,
last seen leaving a bar, or walking down a rural road,
or purlled over because of car trouble, and the next
time he's found he's not alive, if he's ever found
at all. Brandon Swanson nineteen, two thousand and eight Marshall,
Minnesota called his parents after crashing his car on a

(34:32):
rural road. Mid call, he suddenly shouted, oh shit, and
the line went dead. His car was found. He's still
never has been. This is his mom talking to Nancy Grace.

Speaker 16 (34:44):
Nancy Grace every night at eighties dur Hey Talent News Views.

Speaker 21 (34:49):
Annette Swanson is joining us. She is the mother of
Brandon Swanson joining us from Minnesota. Thank you so much
for joining us from Marshall, Minnesota. Actually, first of all,
I want to ask you, miss Swanson, were on the
phone with your son a large part of those early
hours when you were trying to find him and he
was trying to find you. He wasn't hurt at all, right,
I mean the car went into a ditch, but he

(35:10):
seemed to be okay.

Speaker 22 (35:12):
Oh, correct, He said he was fine, that he was
not injured.

Speaker 12 (35:16):
And you know, in.

Speaker 22 (35:17):
Fact, when we did find his vehicle, there was no
damage to it.

Speaker 23 (35:20):
It was simply.

Speaker 22 (35:21):
Muddy from being on a Garbba road, but no damage
to the vehicle.

Speaker 21 (35:26):
What was it like that night to be going through
this and so close to your son, but so far
from your son?

Speaker 7 (35:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 22 (35:38):
You know, as you know, as Brandon tried to explain
to us where his boat him, he was extremely sure
of himself. He felt confident in where he was as well,
and that we were the ones that were confused about
you know, how to get to him. And as the
conversation went on, is the minutes picked by you know,
it came to a point where it's as long as

(36:00):
Brandon was on the phone, as long as he was talking,
as long as we had contact, it was okay, We
would be okay. But the minute that he that that
call dropped, I just became sick. I knew it was wrong.

Speaker 10 (36:14):
I knew it was very very.

Speaker 6 (36:16):
Bad, and.

Speaker 22 (36:18):
Just could hardly fathom, you know, what was happening at
that point.

Speaker 21 (36:22):
Well, I can imagine, I mean to take a breath now,
when the call just hung up like that, with Brandon
in dire distress. I mean, those were the words that
he seemed to utter when he said, Oh, did you
try to call him after that?

Speaker 7 (36:37):
What happened? Oh?

Speaker 22 (36:38):
Yes, we did, you know, We we didn't immediately hang
up the phone. We you know, we called his name.
We tried to you know, thinking that he still had
the phone, that it was very near him, that he
could pick it up.

Speaker 7 (36:49):
We'd he'd hear our voice.

Speaker 22 (36:50):
And we called out to him several times.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
And we realized, you know, he's he's not.

Speaker 22 (36:55):
There, So we did We called him back several times,
thinking you know, he'll he'll see the phone light up,
even if he didn't have it on ring. He would
see his phone light up when a call came in
and he'd find it. You know, he'd answer the call.
And it just didn't happen. Time and again, it just

(37:16):
went on answered.

Speaker 7 (37:17):
The next one has gotten a lot of attention. Brian
Schaefer twenty seven, two thousand and six. Columbus, Ohio, seen
entering a bar in surveillance, never seen leaving, and never
seen again. This is also from Hllen.

Speaker 24 (37:34):
You have a perfectly scripted Hollywood type story. Ohio medical student,
a feature in front of him, and then suddenly he
disappears after a night.

Speaker 22 (37:44):
Out on the town.

Speaker 12 (37:45):
So he went out that night and walked from his
apartment with Clint over.

Speaker 7 (37:50):
To a bar called the l E Tuna, and from
one thirty to two he was there.

Speaker 25 (37:54):
And there's surveillance cameras all over that place, inside.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
And out, and exactly one fifty seven, and that's the
last time anybody saw anything.

Speaker 26 (38:02):
It just looked like a guy with a couple of
friends out having a good time to meet. And that's
what scares me more than anything.

Speaker 24 (38:08):
I think Columbus is one of the most surveilled in
the cities. There is probably not one inch of any
block in that area that can't be seen by law
enforcement in some way. So the question is, how does
a body leave a building when you have so many
surveillance cameras surrounding the place.

Speaker 26 (38:25):
I've been to it many times and I could see
all four corners of that bar. I thought, I don't
understand how you lose somebody in here, Like it's not
big enough to lose a person.

Speaker 11 (38:34):
At I worked a number of cases in missing persons,
and this one is drastically different. And the result of
that is breat from the way it started. Both he
Clint and Meredith, we're coming up the escalators. You see,
he was communicating, seemed happy, more or less leaning against
the side. Here camera is the one that catually keeps
standing in this area. I took the opportunity to spend

(38:54):
some time in and around the ugly Tonis Luna. I'm
trying to think, how did he do this? I try
to walk the steps, I try to go to different locations.
There's cameras everywhere. There's really nothing in there that would
concern me inside a rock, but more importantly, I'll tell
you why I was confident, even more so in the
video you'll see the Columbus Police officer standing there two
and three at a time.

Speaker 7 (39:14):
If somebody wanted to.

Speaker 11 (39:15):
Take Brian and remove him from there, or if Brian
wanted to sneak out, you're certainly not going to do
it from a location that's got police officers standing there,
armed cameras, and you're just not going to do it.

Speaker 7 (39:24):
It's too much of a risk.

Speaker 24 (39:25):
Perhaps somebody put his body in a trash can, which
is why police were found searching landfills in specific spots
where the dumpsters would have dumped the trash at that landfill,
because that was a theory.

Speaker 27 (39:37):
A lot of people believe that Brian could still be
buried in the bar, in the walls, or in the
construction area.

Speaker 25 (39:43):
We started at the roof. We worked our way down
any indication that maybe he was stuff in a floorboard somewhere.
The floors are all cemented, the walls and their block
or claster or cement. There's just no way Brian was
left anywhere in that building. I mean, it was searched
with a fine toothed conbe We had the cadaver dogs
come in and go through that building, and had he

(40:04):
been in there, even if he was covered up with dirt,
they would have hit on it and picked up on it.

Speaker 15 (40:09):
One of the.

Speaker 25 (40:10):
Theories is he went down and got out the fire extape.

Speaker 15 (40:14):
There was only two.

Speaker 25 (40:14):
Ways into the Ugly Tune at that time. It was
through the door at the escalator or the fire escape.

Speaker 27 (40:19):
That fire escape is an emergency exit that was within
the Ugly Tuna Saluona bar. It would come out just
to the side of the original doors he used to
enter the Ugly Tuna Saluna.

Speaker 25 (40:30):
We did interview a manager at Thegly Twennisaloona and they
said that nobody at any time went down the stairs
and exited through those doors. We did check the other
cameras in the courtyard and we still weren't able to
pick him up.

Speaker 27 (40:42):
There's a lot of rumors that one of the ways
Brian could have gotten out of the bar is by
jumping over the second floor.

Speaker 7 (40:48):
Balcony with his height.

Speaker 27 (40:50):
Yes, it is possible, but I do think that with
as crowded as the campus area was at the beginning
of spring break, that would have been noticed by someone.

Speaker 25 (40:57):
When you exit the Ugly tun of Saluna to your
right would have been the service elevator and the emergency
stairs going down into the hallway that runs behind the businesses.
The van used that exit because they had equipment they
had to take the elevator of the detectives reviewed the
video footage and Brian did not.

Speaker 9 (41:18):
Leave with the van at night.

Speaker 25 (41:19):
Also interviewed each person in the van and they all
stated that Brian was not with them when he left
the building that night.

Speaker 24 (41:28):
We see Brian at one five am and the bar's
closing at two am, so you have that five minute
window of wondering. What happened in that small window of time,
was somebody following him? Did something happen inside the bar
away from the cameras that may have led to his disappearance.

Speaker 27 (41:45):
That's strange that Brian went missing right before a planned vacation.
He was very excited about the vacation. Not only was
it the last gift that his mom had given him,
but he had also spent hours upon hours researching this trip,
trying to make it as per as it could be
for the ultimate spring break trip.

Speaker 7 (42:03):
Has never been found. I have no idea what happened there.
My theory for a long time was he exited behind
someone else and it just wasn't picked up on the
security footage, which would be difficult because of his height,
But then it also wouldn't explain him never showing up again.
Here's a more recent one. Daniel Robinson twenty four, twenty

(42:26):
twenty one disappearance, Buckeye, Arizona. He was a geologist. He
left his job site. His car was found wreck closed,
found a distance away, but he's still missing.

Speaker 28 (42:39):
In other news, it's a missing person's case, leading to
countless searches through the Arizona Desert and numerous tips pursued,
all in search of Tempe geologist Daniel Robinson.

Speaker 7 (42:47):
Monday will mark.

Speaker 28 (42:48):
Four years since he disappeared in Buckeye. Total News journalist
Jawn Rice speaking with Daniel's father today and Sean, we
understand the family not giving up, but how is he
doing with another passing year?

Speaker 9 (42:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (42:58):
Original, I got to say.

Speaker 12 (42:59):
June twenty five third is the yearly anniversary that David
Robinson remembers. But he tells me it's an everyday feeling
about his son disappearing out of Finnair, out of a
job in Buckeye he was working that day. It's the
heartache of not knowing what happened to his son and
which one of he hopes goes away that heartache because
he believes someone out there does have the keys, the

(43:19):
answers that his family has now sought for nearly a
half decade.

Speaker 29 (43:24):
I'm suggy to just listen to old voicemails and things
like that, just to not forget Daniel.

Speaker 12 (43:28):
The boys, it's the pain apparent feels when their son
is gone without a trace. The last time Daniel Robinson
was seen alive June twenty third, twenty twenty one, leaving
his work site in Buckeye near Sun Valley Parkway and
Cactus Road. Robinson a geologist who came to the valley
to examine groundwater levels across the state.

Speaker 29 (43:47):
We just thought a college he he fell a love
of geology. Arizona's a perfect place.

Speaker 12 (43:52):
Buckeye Police launching an investigation when Daniel wasn't seen or
heard from that evening. They found Daniel's jeep Renegade, three
miles from his work site, crashed in a ravine.

Speaker 29 (44:02):
So we know with playing it there so something else
placed there ethidae withness.

Speaker 12 (44:06):
With the help of a private investigator, David found evidence
that led him to believe Daniel wasn't the person behind
the wheel at the time of the crash. He suspected
foul play is involved in his son's disappearance, but days
became weeks, and weeks became months with no confirmed sighting
of Daniel alive or evidence collected that points to who

(44:26):
may have harmed him. His father helped lead fifty weeks
of searches through the desert in search of his son.
Most recently this passed April, with the help of Gabby
Batito's dad Joseph, and hundreds of community members.

Speaker 29 (44:39):
When people decided to say, hey, look, I'm leaving my house,
spending my guess money, spend a time they go look
for someone they don't know, someone I could feel another
American scientist, another American that's going to help that father
out to look for his son. I'll tell you what,
that's the feeling. I really am really grateful for to
help people in the community, supporting.

Speaker 12 (44:55):
And while his search for his son will never end,
David is now using what he's learned to help us
their families going through a similar struggle. He's launching a
congressional run in his home state of South Carolina and
is providing support to families of people missing all across
the country.

Speaker 29 (45:11):
They took their time out is on a natural fore.

Speaker 7 (45:14):
And that's kind of the trope of the invisible man.
There's this cultural mythology about these guys. They were strong,
they were tough. They couldn't have been abducted, they couldn't
have fallen victim, and when they do, we don't let
ourselves believe it. Even if they disappear under mysterious circumstances,
even if they're found with inconsistent odd copsy reports, and

(45:39):
most of them are just not found at all. Are
these connected or is that the wrong question? We want
them to be connected. We want a villain, a pattern,
a narrative we can package. But what if the point
is that they're not. What if this is what happens
in a country that leaves people isolated, intoxicated, unprotected, abandoned.

(46:01):
What if the common threat isn't one killer, but one
collective apathy. What if the real serial killer is neglect?
And what about the people who didn't get this kind
of coverage? All of the cases I just mentioned received massive,
massive media attention for these guys, So they weren't the

(46:22):
perfect in visible victims. They weren't like the missing and
murdered Indigenous women. I'm going to play a clip from
my Amber to Carro episode. She went missing from Canada
and was found murdered. This is the story of Amber Toakarro,
her unsolved disappearance and death, and how someone who recorded

(46:44):
the person responsible for it still hasn't found justice. Amber's
phone call. She gets in a car with a man,
she realizes some things off. She gets a phone call
from her brother who's in prison, and this phone call
is recorded. Because everything is recorded, the police wait a

(47:05):
year to release it, and she recorded. She through this call,
she recorded her own killer, and no one has been caught.
So we're gonna hear the phone call now and then
we'll get into the details of what led Amber to
that car and what happened that night and the lack
of what happened afterward. Where barre, Where.

Speaker 22 (47:35):
Are we going? Are you carry anywhere to go?

Speaker 7 (47:47):
I'm gonna go into the city.

Speaker 9 (47:53):
Are we're not.

Speaker 7 (47:57):
Going to street? Are you sure?

Speaker 22 (48:04):
Where are we going?

Speaker 9 (48:08):
Straight?

Speaker 22 (48:09):
Straight?

Speaker 9 (48:16):
Now?

Speaker 7 (48:21):
So she knew something was wrong. She knew she was
being taken in the direct wrong direction. You better not
be taking me or anywhere I don't want to go. No,
I'm not. You better not be. You're in the back
seat now so you can't get out. I know, I
think that's what they say. And then she also says
the road is the road is ending, and he says

(48:43):
it's gravel, so he took her off some side street.
This was recorded on August eighteen, twenty ten, after Amber
accepted a ride from an unknown man near Edmonton. She
had flown to the area from Fort McMurray with her
baby and a friend. She left their hotel room to
hitch a ride into the city, but no one really

(49:05):
knows what her intention was. We do know that she
was never seen alive again. This is from CBC News
and they will play another clip of what I just did.

Speaker 23 (49:19):
You can tell listening to remember Tuckerow's last phone call.

Speaker 30 (49:26):
We're going here.

Speaker 23 (49:31):
That this rural area outside of Edmonton isn't where she
wanted to end up. Tuckoro was a passenger in a vehicle,
the driver a stranger. She likely didn't know their conversation
was being recorded that years later it could help solve
her murder.

Speaker 9 (49:48):
Where all the time listen to her early time.

Speaker 23 (50:03):
It's been five years since her daughter disappeared, but Tutsie
Tuckero's grief.

Speaker 7 (50:07):
Has not subsided.

Speaker 23 (50:09):
Amber was her baby, her only girl after four boys.
One weekend in August twenty ten, Amber told her mother
she and her son were taking a trip to Edmonton
with a friend. Tussy says she didn't want her daughter
to go.

Speaker 9 (50:21):
And she's like, Mom, it's okay, just just two steps
you w' be back.

Speaker 31 (50:25):
And well, even though I tell Amber or not to
go or do whatever, she's gorn to do it anyways,
and so they left that evening.

Speaker 23 (50:34):
They stayed at this motel in Niscu, just outside the city.
Tussy says she and Amber were in constant communication, so
when she couldn't reach her on the second evening, she
was immediately worried.

Speaker 31 (50:46):
I used to always tell Amber, like, don't hitchhike, don't
you know gore strangers, or if you're in a cab,
even if you have to pretend like you're on your
cell phone, like door, just so personal, think you're talking
to somebody, and.

Speaker 9 (51:02):
Don't do nothing to you.

Speaker 23 (51:04):
Tutsi doesn't know how or why, but the night before
they were due to head back home, Amber ended up
in the exact situation her mother warned her about she
got in a vehicle with an unknown man. But this
phone call wasn't fake. It was real going and it
was being recorded.

Speaker 7 (51:22):
On the other end. Amber was never heard from again.

Speaker 23 (51:33):
Tutsi reported her missing right away, but says police didn't
take Amber's disappearance seriously.

Speaker 9 (51:39):
Oh she's probably old partying.

Speaker 31 (51:41):
She'll check them home, she'll.

Speaker 9 (51:42):
Call This is what they told me. But I said,
I still want report of missing Mercy.

Speaker 23 (51:46):
MP didn't seem to put much effort into finding Amber
until two years after her disappearance, when they did something unprecedented.

Speaker 7 (51:55):
They released this audio.

Speaker 23 (51:56):
Recording and asked anyone who recognized this man's voice to
come forward.

Speaker 7 (52:08):
I'm going here.

Speaker 9 (52:11):
Are you sure?

Speaker 23 (52:14):
These have never disclosed how or where they got the
audio recording or who Amber is talking to on the phone.
But we found out that the call to Ambersell came
from her brother, who was incarcerated.

Speaker 7 (52:26):
To this day, no one has been charged. Amber's story
hurts so much, not just because it's rare, but because
it isn't. She's part of a devastating pattern in Canada.
Indigenous women makeup four percent of the population but account
for sixteen percent of all female homicide victims. In the US,
five seven hundred and twelve cases of missing Indigenous women

(52:48):
and girls were reported in just one year twenty sixteen,
but only one hundred and sixteen were logged in the
federal database. The US Bureau of Indian Affairs literally says
this on a website. There is no reliable count on
how many indigenousness women are missing or murdered. That's just horrifying.
We don't know how many because they don't get counted,

(53:11):
because systems don't listen to voices like Ambers until it's
far too late. And Amber isn't alone. Here are a
few more names whose stories haven't been told. Ramona Wilson
vanished in nineteen ninety four hitchhiking to a dance, found
in the woods, no arrest. Loretta Saunders, a student writing

(53:34):
or thesis on missing and murdered, missing, murdered Indigenous women
and girls, murdered by her roommates in twenty fourteen. The
Highway of Tears, a four hundred and fifty miles stretched
in British Columbia, where dozens Indigenous women have disappeared and
been found dead since nineteen seventy. Official numbers say eighteen

(53:54):
but family members say the truth is closer to fifty.
This is a clip from Vice. It was the Searchers
Highway of Tears.

Speaker 32 (54:04):
People are going missing, kids are going missing, women are
going missing. It doesn't matter they are, or what their
races or or anything.

Speaker 11 (54:13):
Shouldn't matter, especially in Canada.

Speaker 32 (54:15):
But you know, there's a lot of people would tell
you it does.

Speaker 19 (54:19):
We're gonna fly up Prince stores and then what sort
of funny agenda.

Speaker 32 (54:22):
I guess we need to think about where where I'm
going to go to try to find some of these people.
They're a little bit on the criminal side, so I
don't anticipate them were to be happy that their face
at their door.

Speaker 33 (54:37):
So we'll do some.

Speaker 9 (54:40):
Run like that.

Speaker 19 (54:43):
This guy passed away last year who was investigating the.

Speaker 7 (54:50):
Growing up here.

Speaker 11 (54:51):
I had no idea.

Speaker 19 (54:52):
That women were going missing and de murdered, and that
more often than not those women were in bigmous And
it was two thousand and two that the Highway of
Tiers started being talked about a lot more publicly and
started learning about this other place in the province where
once again, women were going missing.

Speaker 7 (55:09):
And being murdered. Most of the cases were unsolved, and
once again most of those women were Indigenous.

Speaker 19 (55:15):
Working as a journalist in the city, I've learned about
this guy named.

Speaker 7 (55:18):
Ray who is next cop and.

Speaker 19 (55:20):
He's been investigating some of these unsolved cases on his
own time, and he's agreed.

Speaker 7 (55:24):
To let us come with him to show us.

Speaker 19 (55:27):
What he's all about, and also really curious where he
fits into the bigger picture of the Highway of Tears
and unfortunately what's been going on there.

Speaker 9 (55:34):
For a long time.

Speaker 19 (55:38):
Nick, we're here in Prince George, which is the largest
city in northern British Columbia. About seventy thousand people live here.
And this is also the edge of what people call
the Highway of Tiers, which is Highway sixteen, seven hundred
and twenty four kilometers between here and Prince Rupert on
the coast. And if you go by the RCMP numbers,
nine women have gone missing or been murdered at that

(56:00):
specific stretch of highway. If you ask for stations, groups
or just the communities along this route, and they'll tell
you that number is much higher. This is nine years
raise in Princeton may have been involved in one of them.

Speaker 7 (56:13):
I will link to the full Missing and Murdered Indigenous
Women episode in the show notes truly believe a lot
of those killers are serial killers, that a lot of
those cases are connected. So we don't need a theory
there to know that something's wrong, because every one of
those cases has a moment where someone should have been listening,

(56:35):
a camera that should have been working, a system that
should have done more, people that wished they did more.
Is just this reoccurring thing. So it's not just about paranoia.
It's also about paying attention, a sense of urgency, refusing
to write people off just because they're in a more

(56:55):
vulnerable group, whatever that group may be, or even when
they're not in a vulnerable group, even when they're college guys. Like,
it's all freaking horrifying. Maybe not as horrifying as the
literal epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. No, not
that horrifying, but the fact that it happens at all.

(57:19):
I feel like it just says something about us as
a society. If this all feels a little too hypothetical,
it's not because currently in Houston there are bodies stacking up.
In Austin, they already did, and both cities have been
scrambling to keep the word cereal out of the headlines.

(57:41):
So let's talk about the Texas cases, why people are scared,
what the police aren't saying, and how the internet is
doing the investigating instead. Between December twenty twenty three and
June twenty twenty five, at least sixteen bodies, mostly men,
have been pulled from Houston's by use bodies in less
than two years from the same body's water, most of

(58:04):
them male, most of them found near nightlife districts, most
of them labeled accidental drownings. The official stands from the
Houston PD, we have no reason to believe these deaths
are connected. Mayor John Whitmere even held a press conference
in May twenty twenty five where you said, and I quote,
there's no evidence of a serial killer in our city.
The idea is being spread by social media and it's

(58:25):
simply not true. Authorities insists there's nothing strange going on,
but residents they're not buying it, especially when victims are
found fully clothed, some have missing wallets or ideas. Others
are found in areas where they would have no reason
to be in. Some had t pro tested friends shortly
before vanishing, saying they were lost, scared, or being followed,

(58:47):
let's talk about Austin, specifically Ladybird Lake. Starting around twenty
twenty two, multiple bodies begin turning up in the lake
near Rainy Street, an area full of bars, tourists, bachelor parties,
and were practiced cocktails and Mason jars. Victims were again
young men out drinking, found in the water, no signs

(59:07):
of trauma, death, roll accental, over and over and over again.
Austin locals dubbed the suspected killer the Rainy Street Ripper.
It sounds like a horror story because it kind of is.
Authority say there's nothing to see here, people start watching.
One viral TikTok creator mapped out victim drop points from
both cities and found clusters near nightlife districts. Victims often

(59:32):
matched similar profiles, body space, weeks or months apart, like
a cooling off period. People left asking why won't they
just admit that this is a serial killer. Because if
they admit it, they'd have to act on it. They'd
have to explain why they'd have to let it go somewhere,
do something create panic. Here's a quote from Detective Gannon

(59:56):
Remember him, one of the original smiley faced theories guys.
The similarities between these cases and what we've seen in
other cities is chilling, and the refusal to acknowledge it
put life puts life at risk. Police always say no trauma,
no murder, no witness, no threat, no reason, no story.
But we know by now the absence of evidence is

(01:00:18):
not evidence of absence. In both cities, the absence is
becoming its own evidence. So why the constant denial Declaring
a serial killer can tank tourism, It hurts trust in police,
It makes cities look unsafe. So they keep saying no
foul play, but the bodies keep turning up. There's a

(01:00:39):
cost of not saying the word serial. Here's what happens
when we don't connect to the dots. People don't know
they're in danger. Like here in Portland, friends leave drunk,
friends alone. Whole groups of people like indigenous women, continue
to go unnoticed. Cops don't prioritize them. Killers or whoever
this is keep going. Whether or not there's one person

(01:01:02):
doing it, there's obviously people doing something and pretending otherwise.
Maybe that's what's getting them killed. Let's go back to
New England, where human remains are still being discovered across
three states where at least one arrest was made, but
the story only got murkier. New England, the land of

(01:01:24):
colonial towns, white church steeples, fall foliage, that football team
whatever they're called, the Patriots, and the kind of secret
stone scream they whisper. And over the last year, those
whispers have gotten louder because around Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island,
human remains have been turning up not once, not twice,

(01:01:47):
but a dozen times again and again in suitcases, in
shallow graves, in forests and rivers and dumpsters, and just
like every other case we've covered today, the official response,
no serial killer, no connection, just coincidence. In May twenty
twenty four, a suitcase was found behind a stop and
shop in Groton, Connecticut. Inside were the remains of Suzanne Wormser,

(01:02:11):
a fifty four year old woman who'd been missing for weeks.
Police arrested Donald Koffel, a sixty eight year old, unhoused
man with a long criminal record. Open and shutcase, right,
except it wasn't, because Coffle may have killed one woman,
but he didn't explain all of the others. Over the
following month, more months more remains were found in Boston,

(01:02:34):
wrapped in plastic dumped in industrial areas. Two bodies were
discovered in Providence, partially decomposed. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Tigers
found skeletal remains under a pile of brush and a
human lake washed up on the shore of Narregenzat Bay.
Each case investigated separately, each jurisdiction handling its own body,

(01:02:58):
and none of them saying the one thing everyone's thinking,
are these connected? In the vacuum of official answers, a
Facebook group called New England Unsolved gained traction, along with
Reddit threads and TikTokers with maps and timelines. They're the
ones asking why are so many of these remains wrapped,
contained or disposed of in unusual ways? Why do so

(01:03:21):
many victims share similar characteristics, female, unhoused, vulnerable, some known
to local services, and why has the media coverage been
so quiet? Theory is ranged from one killer with shifting
mos a network targeting marginalized victims, or the bleakest theory
of all, that there is no single killer, just a

(01:03:43):
system so broken, so under resource that people are dying
in droves and no one even notices. And here's a
major reason we don't have answers. This is something that's
been a problem since the height of serial killer since
the seventies, connecting the dots because no one has to.
Boston PD isn't talking to Providence PD. Groden isn't cross

(01:04:07):
referencing with Springfield. The FBI isn't stepping in because there's
no clear federal pattern, and the media isn't interested until
there's a suspect with a face or a nickname. So
what we have is this fog of bodies, this packed
work of horror, with each sitting in its own town,
quiet forgotten, collecting dust. Criminologist doctor Scott Bond told Boston

(01:04:33):
twenty five News earlier this year, the lack of a
confirmed connection doesn't mean there isn't one. What it likely
means is that this system is designed to see across jurisdictions.
We've seen this before. He pointed to Samuel Little, the
most prolific serial killer in US history, with ninety three
confirmed victims. And do you know how long it took

(01:04:54):
to recognize his pattern? Three decades because his victims were poor,
a dy did sex workers, and deemed high risk, not
high priority. Sound familiar, and this is from ABC News.

Speaker 9 (01:05:15):
We have it my legs and pulled.

Speaker 12 (01:05:18):
To the water.

Speaker 33 (01:05:21):
That's the only one that peeled by drilling. She was
pretty good, a light skin brown on the honeycolored again.

Speaker 17 (01:05:35):
And she was a butterfly.

Speaker 9 (01:05:38):
She's tall, she was five nine and it was beautiful
she Uh, she spread me And how much do you
think she made? She looked beautiful, but people on a
kitty realful to get a head.

Speaker 7 (01:05:59):
Uh.

Speaker 9 (01:06:00):
How old do you think she was?

Speaker 7 (01:06:01):
She was thirty and she's a block female. Yeah, and
tell me where you met her. These are some of
his confessions. This is from Oxygen.

Speaker 10 (01:06:12):
Who is Samuel Little? How many people has he killed?
How was the FBI trying to identify unnamed victims? I'm
Stephanie Gomulka with Oxygen dot Com. Here are the details
of the case explained. Serial killer Samuel Little, also known
as Samuel McDowell, was born in Reynolds, Georgia, in nineteen forty.

(01:06:33):
He grew up in Ohio and was raised primarily by
his grandmother. Starting in nineteen fifty six, Little faced several
charges ranging from shoplifting, fraud solicitation, to breaking and entering.
According to the FBI, in nineteen sixty one, he was
sentenced to three years for breaking into a store. After
his release, Little moved around to different states. In nineteen
eighty two, Little was charged for the murder of Patricia

(01:06:54):
and Mount in Florida. Mount was mentally disabled and had
an IQ of forty. According to court records, six year
old body was found in a field in nineteen eighty four.
A jury acquitted him of the murder charges. In October
nineteen eighty four, while living in San Diego, Little was
arrested for assaulting two women, Lauren Barrows and an unnamed woman,
who were both sex workers at the time.

Speaker 7 (01:07:14):
He served around two and a half years.

Speaker 10 (01:07:17):
The cases of three Los Angeles area women who were
murdered in separate attacks in the late nineteen eighties brought
a conviction against Little with lengthier sentences. In twenty twelve,
he was arrested for a narcotics charge and extradited to California.
DNA apteen matched three on sult homicides. In twenty fourteen,
Little was convicted of three counts of first degree murder
for killing Carol Alford, Andre Nelson, and Guadalupe Appadaca. He

(01:07:40):
was given three consecutive life sentences without parole. Since his conviction,
in California. Little has pleaded guilty to additional murders Mary
Joe Payton and Rose Evans, both of the Cleveland area,
as well as pleading guilty to killing two women in
Cincinnati and a Stewart and an unnamed woman. Little was
sentenced to consecutive life terms for the murders of Peyton
and Evans. Was also sentenced to fifteen years to life

(01:08:01):
in prison for the deaths in Cincinnati. In twenty eighteen,
the convicted killer wanted to request to move prisons and
offered to talk to authorities about other murders. According to
the FBI, he has confessed to more than ninety and
authorities say they have been able to verify fifty.

Speaker 7 (01:08:15):
Of those confessions so far.

Speaker 10 (01:08:17):
Little told federal authorities last year he committed the murders
in fourteen different states from nineteen seventy to two thousand
and five. Since then, investigators have been working to identify
unnamed victims. Most of the victims were allegedly strangled, according.

Speaker 9 (01:08:30):
To the FBI.

Speaker 10 (01:08:31):
In some cases, victims were deemed overdose deaths or runaways.
The FBI said quote Little chose to kill marginalized and
vulnerable women who were often involved in prostitution and addicted
to drugs, their bodies sometimes when unidentified, and their deaths
non investment. In December twenty eighteen, he pleaded guilty to
the nineteen ninety four murder of Denise Christie Brothers, who
strangled body was found in a vacant lot.

Speaker 7 (01:08:53):
In Odessa, Texas. He received a life prison term in
the plea deal.

Speaker 10 (01:08:56):
Actor County District Attorney Bobby Bland said in his statement,
this life sentence will run concurrently with his three life
sentences Little is already serving in California.

Speaker 7 (01:09:06):
The FBI has released.

Speaker 10 (01:09:07):
Unmatched confessions, case details, and sketches Little drew of victims
with the hopes of identifying him. An FBI analyst with
a violent criminal Apprehension program, Christina Palazzolo, and a Department
of Justice Senior policy advisor and by Capital liaison Angela Williamson,
have both worked to match evidence of cases to Little's confessions.
For many years, Samuel Little believed he would not be

(01:09:28):
caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims.
Even though he is already in prison, The FBI believes
it is important to seek justice for each victim to
close every case possible, Palazzo said in November twenty eighteen.
In October twenty nineteen, the FBI confirmed they matched little
to fifty cases, with more pending final confirmation. The FBI

(01:09:48):
called him the most prolific serial killer in US history.

Speaker 7 (01:09:53):
And he was able to kill ninety three women because
he knew he could, He knew they were from vulnerable populations,
and he got away with it for thirty something years.
That's horrifying. He wasn't even on a suspect list. He
didn't get some fancy name from the media. He wasn't

(01:10:14):
the Nightstalker, he wasn't BTK or the Zodiac. He just
went completely unnoticed. They had no idea the crimes were
even connected. And that's ninety three women across different states.
And those are some of the scariest serial killers to me,

(01:10:36):
the ones that police aren't looking out for at all.
It reminds me a lot of Israel Keys. This is
from CBS News.

Speaker 30 (01:10:45):
In twenty twelve, last in law enforcements came face to
face with perhaps one of this country's most prolific serial killers.
His name is Israel Keys. Over the next seven months,
he played a cat and mouse game with investigators divulging
clues about other victims. So Peter Vansent got a first
look at the evidence and a look at the FBI's case.

Speaker 7 (01:11:06):
Please help find my daughter.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
In February of twenty twelve, eighteen year old Samantha Koenig
vanished after her night shift at this roadside espresso stand.
Residents of Anchorage, Alaska were shaken.

Speaker 27 (01:11:19):
It basically looked like someone just literally walked out of
their shift.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
But Samantha had not walked out voluntarily. The next day,
investigators watched what happened unfold on security camera video. A
mast assailant had approached the window. When you raise your
hands like that, it's usually because somebody's.

Speaker 9 (01:11:37):
Doing something exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
FBI Special Agent Joline Godin was part of the team
trying to find Samantha.

Speaker 26 (01:11:43):
At this point, you see an individual jump in through
the window, right through.

Speaker 9 (01:11:48):
The window, right through the window.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Have you ever seen something like that before?

Speaker 15 (01:11:51):
No?

Speaker 26 (01:11:52):
And then you see two individuals walk away.

Speaker 9 (01:11:56):
It looks like an abduction.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
After tracking unusual activity on samanth his ATM card, police
arrested thirty four year old Israel Keys four thousand miles
away in Texas, and who the heck is Israel Keys.

Speaker 26 (01:12:09):
Israel Keys was not even on our radar.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
What they didn't realize at the time is that they
had just arrested one of the most monstrous serial killers
in American history.

Speaker 15 (01:12:19):
Once I started, you know, and there was nothing else like.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
It, Keys confessed to killing Samantha Koenig and over the
course of several months, pointed investigators to three other victims,
Bill and Lorraine Courier in Vermont and Deborah Feldman in
New York.

Speaker 13 (01:12:35):
Why did you pick these folks?

Speaker 22 (01:12:37):
I didn't waste random.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
But investigators believe that there are at least seven more
victims based on these drawings found in Israel keys cell
drawn in his own blood. Has the public ever been
shown this before? No, and the significance of eleven skulls.

Speaker 9 (01:12:56):
We believe that eleven is a total number of victims.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):
And investigators, like FBI special Agent Catherine Nelson, are determined
to identify them. Do you have an optimistic streak that
says we can find answers to the other seven cases?

Speaker 9 (01:13:12):
I do.

Speaker 26 (01:13:12):
I absolutely do, And it won't be easy by any means,
and it may take a long time, but I'll never
give up trying.

Speaker 30 (01:13:22):
So Peter Vancent is joining us now, Peter, aside from
those creepy papers.

Speaker 7 (01:13:28):
So this fucking psycho would make kill kits, put them
into states, bury them with all he needed to commit
a murder, use his frequent Flyer miles to fly to
some city, rent a car, drive to some other city
where he had a kill kit, and commit these murders pictures.

Speaker 30 (01:13:46):
Why do investigators believe that there are other victims and
that they could be all over the country.

Speaker 7 (01:13:51):
Well, israel Keys love to travel.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
He would fly to some part of the United States,
rent a car, and sometimes drive several thousand miles along
the way, so he was in a whole bunch of states.
I mean, this is just a partial list. Alaska, Vermont, Washington, Oregon,
New York, New Jersey, California, Texas, Illinois, Tennessee, Indiana, Arizona, Mexico, Utah, Minnesota, Nevada,
and even parts of Canada. And he told authorities that

(01:14:17):
when he had this compulsion to kill that would come
over him, he would select someone completely at random. So
they believe there are at least eleven deaths. But this
speculation is with all that travel that he did and
with his unusual compulsion, there may be many more.

Speaker 4 (01:14:34):
Peter, the FBI showed you those drawings and other evidence
for the very first time. What else did they show
you and why are they doing that? Why are they
choosing this moment.

Speaker 9 (01:14:42):
To do so well?

Speaker 3 (01:14:43):
They called Israel Keys the most meticulous serial killer in
American history for a reason. He would pre position these
things he called kill cashes. They'd be like an orange barrel.
Inside would be a gun, weapons of rope, zip tized
things that he would use that if he was driving
area and wanted to kill somebody, he could access this
cash and use that for his abduction and murder. And

(01:15:06):
the reason why the FBI is showing us these haunting
pictures as you see here and the kill cash items,
is that they want people to call the FBI if
they have a missing loved one, a missing person's case.
It's never been solved, somebody was out hiking because remember
he took people completely at random and often went to
trailheads to get hikers and things. So they're hoping that

(01:15:28):
the public will come forward with questions with tips that hey,
I have a loved one that may have been one
of his victims.

Speaker 4 (01:15:37):
Wow, really fascinating the stuff. And Peter, your report was
airing this weekend. But let me just also offer you
some congratulations into the.

Speaker 7 (01:15:45):
Entire terrifying, terrifying. Israel Key is one that just scared
the shit out of me because he was a serial killer.
Is there a New England serial killer? Is Houston serial killer?
Is there a smiley face killer? We don't know. And

(01:16:06):
that's the scariest part, because whether or not this is
one person, the pattern is always undeniable. Vulnerable people disappearing,
remains found in containers, ditches, waterways, authorities saying nothing, communities
doing the work, and us sitting here listening, wondering why
no one seems to care. Let's recap a bit of

(01:16:30):
where we've been. In Portland, police denied a pattern until
it became undeniable, and Houston and Austin bodies keep turning
up in water while officials beg us not to say cereal.
This smiley face killer theory remains unproven but eerily persistent.
In New England, the debtor whispering through the trees and

(01:16:51):
we're pretending it's just wind. But the question isn't our
serial killers out there? It's what do we lose by
pretending we're they're not? We lose victims, we lose time,
we lose the ability to act before the next body
floats or crumbles or get zipped into a suitcase. And
that's not fear mongering, that's just facing the facts. This

(01:17:15):
is an article from Northeastern University. Why are there fewer
serial killers now than there used to be? Looking at
the most streamed movies or television shows on any giving
streaming service, it would be easy to assume that serial
curllers a lurk behind every corner. The stories of Jeffrey Dahmer,
Ted Bundy, and the Boston Strangler still loom large, even

(01:17:37):
if the likelihood that you'll encounter another Zodiac killer has
been lower. Since the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, a
high activity period for serial murderers, the numbers have dropped significantly.
Numbers peaked in the nineteen seventy when there were nearly
three hundred known active serial killers in the US. In
the nineteen eighties, there were more than two hundred and

(01:17:59):
fifty active serial killers who accounted for between one hundred
and twenty and one hundred and eighty deaths per year.
By the time the twenty ten's rolled around, there were
few or than fifty known active killers. What accounts for
this dramatic decrease over the last forty years. According to Fox,

(01:18:20):
a criminology professor at Northeastern University, it comes down to
several major changes in forensic science, policing, criminal justice, and
technology that have made it harder than ever for the
BTK killers of the world to escape capture. The decline
that started in the nineteen eighties mirrors a decrease in
nationwide crackdown on crime that occurred in the eighties and

(01:18:42):
nineties and made it difficult for serial killers, let alone
anyone involved in a violent crime, to stay out of prison.
Part of it has to do with the same reason
the murder rate has gone down. Fox says, if you
have a surging number of people behind bars, so so
some of the would be serial killers were likely behind
bars as opposed to in the bars looking for victims.

(01:19:05):
Between nineteen eighty and nineteen ninety two, the incarceration rate
in federal and state prisons more than doubled to three
hundred and thirty two people per one hundred thousand US residents,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Advances in forensic
science and DNA testing have also made it possible for
police to more effectively investigate murders, even those that have

(01:19:28):
remained open or questionable for decades. The first case I
was involved in in nineteen ninety one, I was on
a task FORSE investigating the murder of five college students.
Fox says, we had DNA, but it was pretty crude.
We couldn't get DNA from hair. Now you can. You
needed a lot of genetic material to be able to

(01:19:48):
identify the DNA pattern. Now you don't. Forensic genealogy, recently
used in the case of suspected quadruple murderer Brian Koberger,
has even made it possible to test DNA collected at
a crime scene against DNA collected from a suspect's family.
Same with Golden State, and serial killers can leave a

(01:20:11):
digital fingerprint too. Fox says that the proliferation of surveillance
cameras and the advent of cell phones with its GPS
tracking capabilities have made it harder for serial killers to
abduct their victims in the first place. Investigators have also
have even more tools at they're disposable to track a
killer's whereabouts, whether it's an IP address in the case

(01:20:33):
of the BTK killer the medic data off a floppy disk. Falso,
Fox also attributes the decrease in serial killers to changing
behaviors among the public, as well with widespread social and
cultural changes. In the sixties and seventies, drug used, hitchhiking,
the hippie movement, anti establishment conditions were prime for predators

(01:20:56):
to go on the prowl, but things have changed in
the last few decades. Fears around mass killings have increased,
as has the public's general anxiety and distrust for one another.
People are much more aware and cautious than we used
to be, and might be less likely to accept help
from a stranger who says they just want to help
you fix your flat tire. Changes in how parents think

(01:21:19):
about their children's safety also means some of the most
common targets for serial killers. Young women and girls, are
less vulnerable than decades passed. According to Fox, Levin, and Friedel,
of the five five hundred and eighty two victims killed
by serial killers since nineteen seventy, more than half are female.
About thirty percent of those female victims are between the

(01:21:43):
ages of twenty and twenty nine, and twenty three percent
are between ages of five and nineteen. Lori Kramer, a
professor of applied psychology at Northeastern, says many parents now
feel like the world is a more dangerous and risky place,
even at school places they have previ assumed more risk free.
There is a sense that parents need to be much

(01:22:04):
more participatory and intentional about selecting those opportunities in which
their kids are going to be beyond school and church
or other sorts of things that are premty normative for them.
I mean, your kids get shot in church and school too. Sorry,
that was cross. There's just a general anxiety, and I
think that plays out with being protective. Kramer also speculates

(01:22:28):
that the shift towards social and emotional learning that occurred
in school systems across the country over the last decade
could partly explain why there are fewer serial killers now.
This helps students develop empathy and manage their frustration and anger,
while also giving educators a chance to compensate for some
trauma that kids may have experienced in other settings like

(01:22:48):
their homes, by having some identity ability to identify individuals
early in life who are having difficulty to provide appropriate
forms of intervention and treatment. Earlier and to provide more
effective forms of treatment. All of this is improving, Kramer says.
Even though there are fewer serial killers stalking American streets,

(01:23:09):
the culture at large remains fascinated by the horrific, sordid
tales of who Fox calls the legacy killers. Serial Killers
may have an oversized cultural presence given how unlikely it
is for people to encounter them, but Fox says it's
still vitally important to study and hopefully prevent them from killing.

(01:23:29):
The Boston Strangler killed thirteen people and impacted their loved ones,
but was also able to hold the entire city in
a grip of terror for years. The idea that there
was one person who reaked so much havoc on the city.
Whatever we can do to understand and prevent capture someone
like that early on, the better off we are. But

(01:23:50):
at the same time, the New England serial killer, if
there is one, is still running rampant. So that's the
contrast for me. Maybe more serial who would have been
serial killers did become school shooters then I previously thought
when I started this episode, it just seems like such

(01:24:13):
a different mo But maybe if you have that kind
of hatred and need for violence. Maybe it just has
to transfer somewhere, because none of this explains the rise
in mass shootings other than gun laws and the ban
of semi automatic rifles being lifted in nineteen ninety six.

(01:24:38):
I want to look at that a little bit more
before we end. This is from Salon dot Com Swapping
one evil for another? Have mass shooters replaced serial killers?
By Amanda Marcott? Perhaps because he survived while most mass
shooters do not. There's a surprising amount of information coming
out about Nicholas Cruz, the apparent perpetrator of the massacre

(01:24:59):
and Parkland, Florida. This is a twenty eighteen article. He
appears to have a long history of troubled behavior and
outright violence of the sort that suggests some kind of
mental health diagnosis will likely be forthcoming. Cruz also reportedly
bragged about killing animals. In other words, he appears to
fit the profile of a different kind of mass murderer

(01:25:21):
than until recently, what was much more prominent in the
cultural imagination, the serial killer. There can be no doubt
that in pop culture, at least, the mass shooters replaced
the serial killer as the object of public fascination. From
the nineteen seventies through nineties, men like Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz,
and Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed killed multiple people over long

(01:25:44):
periods of time for psychotic and often sexual reasons, became
outright celebrities and terrified people far beyond the plausible level
of threat they posed. After the Columbine shooting of nineteen
ninety nine, however, the serial killer began to be eclipsed
by the mass shooter as a figure of fear and fixation,
so much so that many observers wonder whether the public

(01:26:06):
obsession with mass shooters is contributing to the problem, because
troubled men may glom onto the idea that shooting up
a school or a concert or a church is a
quick road to getting fame and attention. But has the
mass shooter replaced the serial killer in terms of actual
crime statistics are the kind of people who used to

(01:26:26):
kill one person at a time over a period of
months or years, now choosing to grab a gun and
go out in what they perceive to be a blaze
of murderous glory. Are methods of mass murder subject to
trends in the same way that clothing and musical styles
are there's some intriguing evidence that this might be the case.
The rate of serial killing has statistics show plummeted in

(01:26:49):
the past few decades, down from a high of nearly
seven hundred killers a year in the nineteen eighties to
fewer than one hundred a year in the past few years.
While violent crime over all fell during that same period,
the rate of serial killing fell much faster. Meanwhile, public
mass shootings, Harvard researchers argue, are actually rising in direct

(01:27:11):
contrast to the general trend and violent crime overall. The
true trends, taken together could suggest that the kinds of
people who used to be serial killers are now choosing
mass shootings instead. When I tried to research my hypothesis, however,
I found this question was harder to answer than I'd expected.
Same girl, same murder. It should not be shocking to

(01:27:33):
hear is an incredibly complex and diverse phenomenon. It is
difficult even for experts to make definitive statements about the
causes of mass homicide. For one thing, there's a definitional issue.
Experts define a serial killer as someone who kills two
or more people on separate occasions, a group that is
small but very diverse. Mass murder has the same kind

(01:27:56):
of problem, but it's even more vague as there's an
ongoing debate over head. Many people have to die in
one act of violence before it constitutes a mass murder.
I thought it was four. There's also the fact that
many mass murderers, such as Elliott Rogers or Child Whitman,
kill in two separate locations. In both cases, these men
killed the people they lived with before going out in

(01:28:18):
public to shoot strangers. Same with Sandy Hook, Piece of shit,
Adam Lanza. Familicides are the most common mass killings. That
hasn't changed, said Grant Do, the research director of the
Minnesota Department of Corrections. He's skeptical of the notion that
there are more mass murders than there used to be
because the phenomenon of people killing their entire family or

(01:28:40):
shooting up a workplace has been a problem since at
least the nineteen fifties. He conceded during our conversation that
we now see more mass public shootings where victims belong
to this amorphous category of society rather than being people
known to the killer. There's also overlap between the two categories,
as many serial killers commit mass murder as well. Neither

(01:29:04):
do nor would speculate about my hypothesis that America has
traded serial killers for mass shooters, understandably as they are
data driven researchers, but they did share a couple of
intriguing observations. Armat argued that one reason serial killing is
declined that is simply more difficult to pull off than
it used to be. There are fewer ways to access victims,

(01:29:27):
since children not to tend to play not since children
tend not to play unsupervised, and people don't hitchhike as
much as they used to. It's quite possible that someone
who has a desire to kill a lot of people
realizes both that getting victims will be hard and the
cops are likely to catch them after their first murder anyway.
They'll also realize, due to the frequent and well publicized

(01:29:48):
mass shootings, that going to a crowded public location and
shooting the place up offers a chance to kill a
lot of people without going to prison. If they can
escape capture, suicide is always an option, though many of
them do try to escape. Do argued that most mass
shooters are motivated by paranoia, often clinical levels of it.
Believing that society has wronged them in some way. In

(01:30:12):
most cases, this paranoia laughes onto specific targets, typically family
members are co workers. A newer element, he said, is
this unbridled misanthropy instead of an animous directed toward a
group of specific people, which he suggested might contribute to
the higher body count in some recent shootings. He also
noted that mass shooters of all sorts tend to be

(01:30:34):
deliberate about it and plan their crimes in advance, another
feature shared with serial killers that used to haunt the public.
So there is some evidence that for the small, deeply
troubled subset of people who harbor murderous fantasies, mass shootings
have eclipsed serial killing is the preferred method for acting

(01:30:55):
on that urge. But the larger takeaway is that researching
mass murder is extra extremely challenging, and the evidence doesn't
provide neat easy answers. More money and time needs to
be put into these questions if society really wants to
reduce these spectacular acts of murder, as other countries have shown,
taking away the means to commit murder is a useful

(01:31:17):
preventative as well. It sure is, but I don't see
that happening anytime soon. So I didn't really have too
much of a hypothesis going into this one, other than
not understanding why police are so hesitant to call some
of these cases serial killings, where like in Portland they

(01:31:42):
obviously were, and that whole thing was really rough for me.
It's just so disturbing.

Speaker 9 (01:31:50):
What do you think?

Speaker 7 (01:31:51):
Do you think serial killers became mass shooters? Do you
think they're two separate kinds of evil? Do you think
any of these crimes are did? Do you think there's
anything behind this Smiley killer theory? Let me know if
you're still listening. I know this was a super super
dark one, so I'm gonna wrap it up. Really bummed

(01:32:12):
myself out with this one, But let me know your
thoughts because everything just feels incredibly incredibly messed up. All right,
it is nine pm. I am still delirious with fever,
so I hope this was an okay episode. I know
it was a bit all over the place. Send me

(01:32:33):
your thoughts, let me know what you think. I'll be
back talking to you tomorrow about something much lighter mon
the mom Talk Project, I mean, human experimentation. I guess
it's lighter in a different way, but my heart goes
out to all of the victims. This stuff really breaks

(01:32:55):
my heart. I really struggle after recording. These kind of
episodes take a toll on me, and I've bit off
a lot with the thirty one episodes for the thirty
one days of October. I'm definitely gonna take some time
off in November. But send me your thoughts. You can

(01:33:15):
find me online on All the Things at Daniellascrima, at
Broad's Next Odor. I read all of your messages. Keep
sending me your scary stories, your theories, what you want
to hear covered next. If you enjoyed this episode, send
it to a friend, Please like great review, leave five stars.
It really helps me out. I have like eight thousand

(01:33:38):
listeners a month and like eighty four reviews on Apple,
so very very disproportionate from the amount of people who
listen to the amount of people who leave reviews. And
I always forget to say this at the beginning of
the episode, so I have to remember to do that
as well. I love you very much. I will talk
to you very soon. Goodbye.

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