Smiley Face Serial Killer?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

The whole thing sounds ridiculous to me. An organized gang of serial killers? No way. To me it sounds like a bunch of parents in denial. They don’t want to admit that their kid was just a dumbass who got loaded and walked into the Mississippi, so they construct this elaborate conspiracy theory, finding specious connections and “codes” wherever they look.

As to the smiley faces – they admit they’re all different and have no consistent, recognizable signature, and this is stuff these guys are going looking for long after the fact, They go back to sites months or years later, look for any repository of graffiti in the general area and if they see any kind of a smiley face, they say, they’ve found the signature.

Also, how do they know where these dudes fell into the water? To me that just sounds like a convenient way to make the graffiti fit their theory. A smiley face was found on a bridge 3 miles upstream from where the body was fshed out of the river? That’s where he was dumped in!

The most implausible aspect to me is the ludicrous idea that it’s a group. Serial killers don’t work in groups. There are some rare instances of serial killers working in pairs, but not in groups, and the idea of a highly organized, carefully executed 10 year conspiracy to go around dumping shitfaced college guys into ponds just does not sound the least bit credible to me. It reminds me of the Satanic cult conspiracies of the 80’s. How would these people even find each other? What is their motive? How do such highly disturbed individuals stay so tightly controlled for 10 years?

The whole theory is based on nothing but the completely unremarkable fact that sometime smiley faces can be found among the grafitti in some vague general areas where some victims may or may not have gone into the water. It can’t even be proven that those faces were painted at the time the victims drowned. They could have been painted months or years later (or months or years before).

The FBI is apparently rejecting this theory, and so shall I. I think some parents just have a very hard time accepting that their kids can die in such an abrupt, unglamorous, foolish, pointless manner and they want to find some other kind of meaning or purpose in it. To me they seem like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, clipping out magazine articles and newspaper ads, obsessively looking for patterns. I’ll believe in ghosts before I’ll believe in a serial killer’s club, and I will never believe in ghosts.

22

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The most implausible aspect to me is the ludicrous idea that it’s a group. Serial killers don’t work in groups. There are some rare instances of serial killers working in pairs, but not in groups, and the idea of a highly organized, carefully executed 10 year conspiracy to go around dumping shitfaced college guys into ponds just does not sound the least bit credible to me.
[/QUOTE]

Right, they’re lone wolves by nature. The part that really gets me is that they’re apparently so secretive that their work is almost indistiguishable from a long series of accidents. If it looks that much like a coincidence… that’s probably what it is.

23

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
The whole thing sounds ridiculous to me. An organized gang of serial killers? No way. To me it sounds like a bunch of parents in denial. They don’t want to admit that their kid was just a dumbass who got loaded and walked into the Mississippi, so they construct this elaborate conspiracy theory, finding specious connections and “codes” wherever they look.

As to the smiley faces – they admit they’re all different and have no consistent, recognizable signature, and this is stuff these guys are going looking for long after the fact, They go back to sites months or years later, look for any repository of graffiti in the general area and if they see any kind of a smiley face, they say, they’ve found the signature.

Also, how do they know where these dudes fell into the water? To me that just sounds like a convenient way to make the graffiti fit their theory. A smiley face was found on a bridge 3 miles upstream from where the body was fshed out of the river? That’s where he was dumped in!

The most implausible aspect to me is the ludicrous idea that it’s a group. Serial killers don’t work in groups. There are some rare instances of serial killers working in pairs, but not in groups, and the idea of a highly organized, carefully executed 10 year conspiracy to go around dumping shitfaced college guys into ponds just does not sound the least bit credible to me. It reminds me of the Satanic cult conspiracies of the 80’s. How would these people even find each other? What is their motive? How do such highly disturbed individuals stay so tightly controlled for 10 years?

The whole theory is based on nothing but the completely unremarkable fact that sometime smiley faces can be found among the grafitti in some vague general areas where some victims may or may not have gone into the water. It can’t even be proven that those faces were painted at the time the victims drowned. They could have been painted months or years later (or months or years before).

The FBI is apparently rejecting this theory, and so shall I. I think some parents just have a very hard time accepting that their kids can die in such an abrupt, unglamorous, foolish, pointless manner and they want to find some other kind of meaning or purpose in it. To me they seem like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, clipping out magazine articles and newspaper ads, obsessively looking for patterns. I’ll believe in ghosts before I’ll believe in a serial killer’s club, and I will never believe in ghosts.
[/QUOTE]

With you in principle on much of this.

Sociopaths are sociopaths because they generally can’t form close and effective relationships with others. Let alone a clandestine (and highly effective) guild of cooperative secret serial killers.

The articles are oddly silent about the specifics of the “commonalities,” as I and several others have noted. I really do want to know how many smiley faces there were, exactly, and how close they were to the body finds.

It did also occur to me that if this outcome were not sinister in origin, the group I might look to as amply eligible for “behavior caused by over-the-top drunkenness and subsequent solo wandering” would be “whiteboy collegiate athletic types.”

Having said that, it is not total bullcrap to be startled by just how many white boys go missing in this particular way. I and others I know had commented on this pattern of story before this came out. It may just be that we underestimate how stupid really, really blackout drinking can make you act when you are a white jock. It may just be that we misunderestimate the proximity of major bodies of water and their stumble-in-affinity. But this mishap does seem to happen to drunk white dudes leaving a bar an inordinately lot, for whatever reason.

24

Well, Steve Huff, a respected crime blogger/actual Journalist isn’t buying it. Read his posts five, and seven here.

25

[QUOTE=Zabali_Clawbane]
Well, Steve Huff, a respected crime blogger/actual Journalist isn’t buying it. Read his posts five, and seven here.
[/QUOTE]

Pardon, “isn’t buying it” should more properly be stated “remains skeptical but open minded/willing to eat his hat”.

26

If the police do suspect a serial killer(s), then certain details will be kept out of the press to make it easier to sniff out nutters/copycats.

27

[QUOTE=Huerta88]
Is that true? I was thinking much the same thing. Of random things to sketch if you are doing graffiti sketches, that is not far from the top of the list.
[/QUOTE]
Around here, I’d put smiley faces at the top with marijuana leaves and penis graffitti second and third respectively. You can find almost everywhere. I someone said: “Find me a smiley face, roughly a mile upstream.” I’m quite confident that I could find one if I looked hard enough.

Hell, even out in the middle of nowhere, and near water too. One of my old guidebooks, used to refer to a smiley face painted on a rock, near the water, and it helped you find an offshoot of the Bruce Trail than ran along a good long stretch of Georgian Bay.

If some detectives are seriously pursuing that idea, they’ll need a lot more than random coincidence to link such a vast number of crimes. Otherwise, it will be just like the trumped up allegations of a vast network of Satanic cults that were sacrificing babies in ritual abuse twenty yeas ago.

ETA: It’s hard enough to get people to co-ordinate properly to make mundane plans work. I can’t imagine that you can co-ordinate the deaths of 40+ people across the country and not have someone screw something up so bad that your killer-club newsletter gets left at the scene or something.

28

[QUOTE=RyJae]

If this turns out to be correct, wow a nationwide group of killers all targeting athletic young men. Freaky and scary.
[/QUOTE]

It is my plan to foil their attempts to kill me by being 40 and out of shape. So far it is working.

29

One of these was a student where I went to college (Clarkson University, Potsdam NY), though it happened after I had graduated and left. I do remember reading about it, and the fact that a big deal was made that he left to go home and only lived a block from the Cantina (Mexican bar/restaraunt) - well the Raquette river, a waterfall, and 2 bridges over the river are also only a block from that restaraunt. I don’t know exactly where he lived, but he could have had to cross one of the bridges, or could have just walked across the Cantina parking lot to sit by, look into, throw rocks into the river before going home, and fallen in.

Also, to get from downtown Potsdam up to campus you have to cross this river - it was not uncommon for stupid drunk kids returning to the dorms after a night out to jump off the bridge into the river to show how cool they were, and since there is a waterfall not to far away, it was also quite dangerous. I seem to recall hearing of such a drowning the year or 2 before I went to shcool there.

However, it is weird that another student at nearby St. Lawrence (less than 10 miles away) apparently drown in a similiar way less than a year before, but bars, drunk kids, and nearby rivers don’t really mix well.

30

[QUOTE=Fat Chance]
One of these was a student where I went to college (Clarkson University, Potsdam NY), though it happened after I had graduated and left. I do remember reading about it, and the fact that a big deal was made that he left to go home and only lived a block from the Cantina (Mexican bar/restaraunt) - well the Raquette river, a waterfall, and 2 bridges over the river are also only a block from that restaraunt. I don’t know exactly where he lived, but he could have had to cross one of the bridges, or could have just walked across the Cantina parking lot to sit by, look into, throw rocks into the river before going home, and fallen in.

Also, to get from downtown Potsdam up to campus you have to cross this river - it was not uncommon for stupid drunk kids returning to the dorms after a night out to jump off the bridge into the river to show how cool they were, and since there is a waterfall not to far away, it was also quite dangerous. I seem to recall hearing of such a drowning the year or 2 before I went to shcool there.

However, it is weird that another student at nearby St. Lawrence (less than 10 miles away) apparently drown in a similiar way less than a year before, but bars, drunk kids, and nearby rivers don’t really mix well.
[/QUOTE]

EDIT - You know, upon further searching of my memory of Potsdam, and confirmation via google satelite, the back of Cantina was literally against the river I think (if I am picking the right building) - so the river was literally 5 feet out the back door, and if he lived in town could have been walking along the back alley as a shortcut and fallen in, at which point he would have been swept over the waterfall that is only 50 - 100 feet down river.

And it was 2 waterfalls and 3 bridges

31

Here is part 2 of the news investigation (with more about Jenkins’ death): http://kstp.com/article/stories/S424705.shtml?cat=5

And here is a whole forum dedicated to the theory at Websleuths.com: Deaths of Male College Students/The River Killers | Websleuths

32

[QUOTE=Zabali_Clawbane]
Well, Steve Huff, a respected crime blogger/actual Journalist isn’t buying it. Read his posts five, and seven here.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I see that for some reason, that topic has vanished over there. (ETA: Strike that, it has been combined. Here.) But Steve Huff is skeptical as to it being a serial killer, and he went on the record to say so. He said he’s willing to be convinced, but right now, he doesn’t think it likely, or words to that effect.

33

Steve Huff has written an editorial about the Smiley Face Serial Kiler gang, and he explains why he is skeptical. It is a good read.

34

Doesn’t seem plausible to me either for all the reasons others have given. As an example of stupid shiat people will do when drunk: I, once, along with my best friend, walked about 1/2 a mile home from a pub, long the frozen surface of a canal.
The ice was creaking and cracking all around us and we thought it was very amusing indeed. I even stopped halfway to try and pull out some trash that was frozen into the ice. Dumb, dumb dumb.

35

I’ve been marveling at this story all week. When Jenkins was first reported missing, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “In the river.” For as long as I’ve been paying attention to the news, it seems there have been young (usually college-age) males who leave somewhere after drinking and disappear on the way home, and they generally turn up in a river or lake. Up here, part of this is because some of our major colleges are on rivers. Heck, most stuff up here is on a river or a lake if it’s worth anything at all.

Back in my drinking days, we had a lot of keggers on the shore of the Mississippi or Minnesota Rivers (when we weren’t in the Lilydale caves, but that’s a whole 'nother bag of death-dealing fish). I don’t understand why people are so surprised that young men, when drunk, often fall into water and then can’t get out. That’s pretty much the definition of drunk, no?

Chris Jenkins’ family understandably wants an explanation for his death, but I don’t think this is it.