Crime Weekly - S3 Ep369: Bodies In The Bayou | Is There A Serial Killer in Houston?

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Authorities in the Houston area have recovered numerous bodies from their bayous over the past year, marking dozens of discoveries in 2025 and into early 2026. While some deaths are attributed to drownings or undetermined causes, many families are left without answers.Try our coffee! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.comBecome a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeeklyShop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shopYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcastWebsite: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.comInstagram: @CrimeWeeklyPodTwitter: @CrimeWeeklyPodFacebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Hey everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasser. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. Over the past year, dozens of bodies have been recovered from Houston's Bayou system, including more than 30, just in 2025 alone. Officials are very clear on the matter. say there is no evidence of a serial killer operating in the area and that these deaths are unrelated. But despite those assurances, fear and speculation continue to grow online and in the community, which I think we can all understand. When the numbers keep climbing and answers feel limited, people start asking a familiar question. Is there something the public doesn't

know? Tonight we're breaking down what's fueling these fears, what law enforcement is saying, and what the facts actually show. And so, yeah, just on the surface when you hear this, first off, I think of the movie, It, or welcome to Darius, the first thing I think of. But obviously, that's a fictional story as far as we know. But yeah, when you have 30 bodies alone recovered just in 2025, it's understandable that people from that community are going to start asking questions. Yeah. So actually, two bodies were found towards the end of December of 2025. I got a bunch of messages. I've been getting a bunch of messages for weeks talking about, you know, how people are like, hey, the cops are saying this isn't a serial killer. People, you know, the cops are saying

that this isn't related, but we who live in this area are concerned and we would like you to look into it. So let me talk about the location. We've got the Buffalo Bayou System. It's the primary natural waterway running through Houston. It's part of a much larger Bayou system that sort of defines the city's landscape, flood control infrastructure. It begins in Western Harris County. it flows east through downtown Houston, eventually feeds into the Houston Ship Channel before reaching Galveston Bay. And it's pretty long. It stretches roughly 52 miles. Now, Buffalo Bayou is just one piece of Houston's extensive bayou system, which includes White Oak Bayou, Brays Bayou, Sims Bayou, and Greens Bayou. Now, when you look at the actual facts and you look at the numbers,

it is pretty alarming. So what we've got here is 33 Bayou-related deaths in the city, in 2025. And then the year before that, 2024, there was 35. And then if you kind of look, I know, it's a lot. And if you look back over nine years, so it looks like they've kind of been sort of tracking the nine years in an Institute of Forensic Sciences report, more than 200 bodies were found in local bayous. So the highest number of deaths during that span was the 35 bodies found in 24, but 200 bodies in a nine-year period. And yeah, I would say that if you're a local and you keep hearing news of this and there's news reports coming up and you're putting two and two together, you're kind of going to start wondering what's going on here? Why is this happening? And is there

one person or maybe a series of people that are working together who are committing crimes and using the Bayou system in Houston as their dumping ground for these bodies? Right. Doesn't necessarily have to be one person, a serial killer. It could be one person. I've even seen some people who have messaged me saying maybe there's a, you know, a bunch of people working together who... It could be. So I understand that there are concerns. But law enforcement has been very, very clear. And they're saying, hey, there's nothing to see here. You don't have to worry about this. They've kind of chalked it up to the city's large homeless population. The district attorney of Harris County, Sean Tier, told KPRC, quote, there is nothing,

nothing, and I want to be crystal clear to indicate that there is someone operating here as a serial killer. There are many reasons for these deaths. None of them are a serial killer, end quote. Now, they've, once again, they've said it's Houston's massive homeless problem, mental health, substance abuse issue. issues, but the police do not deny that some of these deaths are in fact homicides, but they're saying that those homicides are not connected. And these two most recent bodies that are found as of now, their autopsy reports are still pending. Here, the district attorney, he's saying it's a little known fact, but when you get into the bayous, it's very difficult to get out. And when you combine that

with someone that's high on some substance, someone that's intoxicated somehow, it makes it even more difficult. I guess my question would be why, if you're intoxicated or onset, why is somebody getting in the bayou? Like, it's December, especially now it's December. It's, you know, I'm sure it's not as cold in Texas as it is here where I live in New York or where you live in Rhode Island, but it's still not warm. It's not swimming weather. And what's going on, basically, this is something that I think the public has a right to address. The public has a right to have questions about. And for the police to come out and basically say, hey, there's nothing to see here, stop being so worried. When you've got 200 bodies being found in the bayous in a nine-year

period, over 30 of them in 2024, over 30 of them in 2025, what's going on? Why all of a sudden did the bayous become a place where, you know, people who are intoxicated or people who are unhomed all of a sudden want to hang out in? What's going on? And if some of them are homicides, then you can't really use that excuse to write off their deaths. I agree with, most of what you said, I'll just, I'll play devil's advocate just to give another side of it because, you know, I can see the criticism coming towards law enforcement when you, you have a concern within the community. And it appears that they're basically playing it down. And they're not, they're not taking

into consideration that these people may not have access to the same information that law enforcement has. So not having that knowledge creates the fear. By not being transparent, they don't have the same privileges that police officers within that agency have where they can look at it and say, oh, yes, I can see why there's no correlation here. There's not a connection. It's not a homicide. They're basically as adults just being told by other adults, like you said, hey, don't worry about it. We got it covered. And anecdotally, I'll give you one example, because when I was a police officer, we would work cases. It was a homicide, whatever it might be, an armed robbery,

whatever it might be. And we weren't allowed to divulge everything as the investigation was going on and I always just felt like, hey, you have to trust us. You just have to trust us public. We're handling it. Let us do our job. It'll all be okay. And I always accepted that as this is how it is. Then I had a situation where there was a hit put on me. And my buddies, my colleagues were working my case. And I specifically remember a day where I'm down in my office with my team and a friend of mine, I shouldn't even say a friend, like an acquaintance who was a a detective that I had worked with for, you know, as a patrolman, almost 10 years at that point. And I said, hey, what's going on with this? Have you tracked this guy down yet? Like,

I know who he is. You know who he is. Why is he not in cuffs? And he looked at me and I don't, he didn't mean it this way, but he was like, hey, he just put his hands up and he was like, hey, just relax. We got this. And I lost my mind. I lost my mind because another adult telling me like, hey, don't worry, we know your life is in danger and you're worried about your family's safety as well but trust us we got this bro i don't want to hear that and and neither does the community they don't want to hear that of course not it's okay to come out and say hey guys don't worry there's nothing here but you have to break your normal process and give more information to support why you're saying that allow people to see as much as they can so they can come to the potentially

the same conclusions that you have come to that's one side of it now on the other hand And this is kind of a morbid way of looking at it, but I want to be transparent with you guys. As much as we never want a serial killer in any community, specifically the ones that we're patrolling, there is a part of us as detectives who hope that we get that big case one day. Like that monster case where there is a serial killer in our community and he's out there and it's our job to catch him, right? Like you don't wish that on anybody, but if it happens as a police officer, that's something you all think about, right? Like, that's the unicorn case. So when law enforcement

comes out and says, guys, there's no connection here. There's not a serial killer. That's not because they wanted to be that way. I think it'd be the opposite. If they felt like there was a serial killer, it would be all hands on deck. They would be out there doing what they got to do because not only is it a danger to the community, but this is something that many investigators, I'm trying to word everything appropriately here. Please feel free to correct me, but they dream of this type of case. Like this is a once in a lifetime type of case that you would get as an investigator. I never had a serial killer case as a police officer. I'm glad I didn't on one hand, but on the other, there's part of me that wonders would I have been able to solve it, right? So

that is another side to this coin. But I think overall, when you have this many bodies in one specific area, it's going to cause concern. I went down to New Orleans and investigated the case of Sharon Robinson for breaking homicide. And there was this highway down there, or there is this highway down there, Highway 55. And along Interstate 55, there was just a ton of bodies that had been found over the years, many of them sex workers. So we were investigating the potential that there was a serial killer, but what we ultimately learned is, yeah, maybe there was one person who was using this area, but there were many

people or even criminal enterprises that were using this area as a dumping ground. because it wasn't heavily policed and it was easy to hide a body. So even though there were 30, 40 bodies, we ultimately concluded that we didn't believe all of them were connected. Although, even to this day, I still believe some of them were connected. And it's a pretty good case. I actually think it could be connected to a former police officer who knew the area. But that's, I'll save that for a different day.

All right. So I'm going to pose a few facts to you and a few questions to you with your background and law enforcement. Before you jump into that, that, but does that make sense what I'm saying? Does it sound insensitive? Like, as an investigator, you hope for that big case. I agree with you in some terms, but here's what you need to know. Okay, cool. Hit me with it. Houston is going to be a host city for the FIFA World Cup coming up in June, between June. This story sounds familiar, doesn't it? What story does it remind you of before you continue? Oh, it reminds me of a theory in the Megan Trussell case where, you know, and that's a

university town. So, so is Houston, right? Yep. Yep. So we've got the World Cup. They're going to be one of the host cities. They're hosting seven matches between June 14th and July 4th. And so a lot of locals, and this isn't me. Like, obviously, I don't know what the hell's going on Houston. This isn't me, but a lot of locals are like, yeah, well, that's exactly what a police force would say when you're coming up to hosting the World Cup and you want to wait into the tourists leave to actually release any real information on this. And that makes sense. It's not cheap to be a host city for the World Cup or any major event like this. It's not cheap. A lot of money coming into the city. A lot of money going out initially to be the host city, which most likely has already been spent since we're talking about it coming up this summer. Yep. Contracts, things like that have been put out already, already kind of signed on the dotted line. So yes, you're going to get a lot of money coming in as long as people feel like it's a safe

place to go. And if the police were coming out right now being like, yeah, you know, we're pulling bodies out of the bayou like crazy. And we can't honestly tell you for sure that they're not. not all connected. How could they tell us for sure that they're not all connected? At this point, 40% of the deaths have been listed as undetermined, which means that the police can't really tell you whether it's a suicide, a murder, an accidental death, 40%. There's almost half. So how can you tell us, if those are undetermined, 40% of them are undetermined, how can you tell us for sure that

they're not connected? And even if they're not connected, as in, you know, somebody's killing people, Now, I'll give you the fact that all 200 of these deaths in nine years are probably not all murders, but some of them are for sure. And a big chunk of those 40% of undetermined deaths could also be. So even if it's not one person, you know, even if it's not Dexter out there taking people out and putting them in the bayou, there could be a huge criminal element in the Houston area and they just know, hey, the bayou is a good place to get rid of these bodies. So you still have to worry. criminal organizations, multiple gangs who all know this is a good dumping ground. Exactly. And then they say, well, it's the homeless population and, you know, drugs and alcohol and mental illness. Okay.

Could be some of it. So you could, but you could also still be having someone out there who's killing homeless people. And as you talked about, you know, sex workers in New Orleans, this is a vulnerable population. Sex workers are a vulnerable population. The homeless population is a vulnerable population. So if you've got someone taking out these people in these populations, wouldn't you still want to know it? Wouldn't you still want to solve it? Even if they're just targeting the homeless population, you cannot write off all 200 deaths as well, they got a little high and wandered into the bayou and couldn't get out. I think that the way that they're minimizing it and

how hard they're going and being like there's nothing to see here is what's making people even more suspicious. I don't disagree with that part, which is why I'm saying it's okay to say, hey, this isn't connected, there's not something bigger going on here, but then they have to support it with actual evidence. They can't just say trust us. In our society today, with law enforcement, it's not there. You have to give us more. You have to back up what you're saying with actual evidence without jeopardizing a case. So if it is in fact exactly the way you're saying it, put out some documentation that supports what you're saying so people can be their own investigator, read the material themselves and come to their own conclusions.

And just to even take what you said a step further, if there was someone out there who was trying to carry out these crimes, but also get away with it, to your point, that would be a great way of doing it. If you see that law enforcement is approaching the deaths in the bayou as, you know, it's a homeless population, there's a lot of drugs and all this other stuff, what better way to get away with it than to mix in your murders in that area

so that maybe law enforcement will overlook it. So there is definitely an argument to be made. And I think overall, we both agree if you're going to come out and essentially minimize the fears of the community, you better make sure that you dot your eyes, cross your T's, and maybe break protocol and release more information. Because if it's not something that we need to be worried about, then it's not an active investigation. And if it's not an active investigation, that means that you can share that.

information with the public and you should so that we can independently as a society verify what you're saying so i think we're on the same page and i want to talk about a specific case also because we you know the police are coming out like hey most of these are like you know he's got a big homeless population and drugs and well we have 20 year old college student jade mkissick who went missing in september and then her body was found they pulled her out of the bayou right this is not a part of the homeless population. And they said, oh, well, she was last seen drinking at bars with her friends. How many times have we seen this exact scenario?

We talked about it in Austin. We talked about it in Nashville where these people are being found in bodies of water. And the police are like, well, they were drinking before. Yeah, well, where Jade was last seen drinking was two and a half miles away from where she was found in the bayou? So once again, where's your like reasoning as the police force to say this 20-year-old student was out drinking with friends? and then what? She walked away from the bar and was like, that bayou looks fun. Let me go inside of it. Or she supposedly may have fallen into the bio. And Jade McKissick's death, as of now, is ruled undetermined due to all these different factors, the heat, the water, et cetera. There needs to be more empathy and there needs to be more investigation because I don't believe in coincidences in general.

And you can't just keep saying that all of these people who are dying accidentally or because of the influence of drugs or alcohol are just ending up in this body. system. It doesn't make any sense. And if you're going to say it, again, support it with documentation. You can't just come out and say it. Let us decide because there's going to be people like you and I that are going to come out and cover it. And we're going to look at the reports that they release. And we're either going to say, yeah, I get it now. I see how they're coming to these conclusions. Or we're going to question it. That's the risk that they run. But if you're going to come out and say there's nothing to worry about here. You've got to be willing to put your money where your mouth is.

Release the documentation, release the investigations that you did conduct that allowed you to come to the conclusion that you came to. And then we can either say, yeah, we're out here. We have a big platform. We agree with them. We've now looked at their reports. It makes sense. But without that information, without having it being disclosed publicly, it's going to cause

things like this. It's actually going to create more panic and more frustration. I agree. and I just don't think, and I do think that the reason that they're so like, hey, stop talking about this, there's absolutely not a serial killer. Okay, maybe absolutely not a serial killer, but you may have criminal pockets in the Houston area that are using this bayou system as a dumping ground for people they kill, knowing that the water and the time that it takes for them to be found is going to make identifying their cause of death and identifying any forensic evidence on their bodies to figure out what happened to them or who did it to them far more difficult. If that's the case. Especially when law enforcement's minimizing it and not really paying. They're like, hey, law enforcement don't care about bodies over in that area. That's the place we want to go.

Hey, at minimum, let's get some more patrol units over there. So people stop using that area. Something. Put surveillance cameras around this area. And I know, once again, this is a long stretch of waterway to monitor with people or technology. But still, something needs to happen. More cameras. Yeah, that's what I said.

put surveillance cameras up, but you need to be letting the city know, whether it's the people who are worried for their safety or the people who may be using this waterway to hide their crimes. We're going to be looking at this area more closely, but it feels like the police, the DA, the government of Houston right now are more focused on, hey, we're hosting something really big here this summer. We don't want people to be scared to come here. We don't want people to think that there's a high crime rate in Houston, which there kind of is, okay? They're kind of is. I mean, we just solved the case in Houston. Obviously, that was from 1992, but no, there's definitely a lot of crime in Houston, and optically, it doesn't look good, considering

what you just brought up as far as what's at stake here is from a financial perspective. But, yeah, if there's any major updates in this case, we'll definitely let you guys know. It wouldn't be the first time where law enforcement says one thing, and then months later, they come out and say, oh, our bad, we got it wrong. Which after the World Cup, they might come out and be like, well, actually, we decided to look into this further and, you know, there is something to see here. And then I think people are going to be really pissed off that you let them walk around this city for, you know, another additional six, seven, eight months while you brought in your money because you spent a lot of money to host

this World Cup. And then you've kind of let them go because you can't publicly say, yeah, you know, be a little bit more safe out there. Just, just be on the safe side, you know, be vigilant, maybe keep an eye on things. They can't even say that. They're just like, nothing to see here. no serial killer, nothing's awry, just the homeless people getting drunk and doing drugs and wandering into the bayou. No, I don't think so. But let us know what you guys think. Yeah, let us know what you think. They definitely need to release more information. I hope that based on the feedback, based on the outcry, they do decide to release some more documentation regarding certain investigations they conducted. But before everything goes down,

because doing it after the fact, once the money's received, you're going to lose the trust of the community if you haven't already. So they won't. They won't do anything else until that World Cup's over and they may even keep it concealed and keep going. But let's see. Let's see. Or there is a possibility they're not connected.

You got to play both sides here. All 200 not connected or all accidents. No, no. They've already said some of them are homicides. I mean, we're kind of being redundant here, but they've said some of them are homicides. They said some of them are undetermined. 40% is way too high.

Yeah, is way too high. So they have to look into it and you make a valid. argument and how can you say they're not related if you can't even determine a cause of death. So there's more work that needs to be done. There are politics involved with law enforcement agencies. Many of the chiefs that are hired are hired by the mayors of that town or city. So there is some expectations there when you hire someone and you have to assume that they're working together collectively. We've always said this within the law enforcement community. When you're a police officer, you are a police officer until you become a police

chief because at that point in most agencies you're no longer in the union and now you're more of a politician than you are a police officer. So these are things you have to consider and it starts from the top and we don't know what's being said inside. But Houston is a big agency and if there's more to this story, not everyone's going to stay quiet and I hope that if something more is going on here, that's sinister, someone is a whistleblower and shares that information. And if that does happen, we will absolutely let you guys know. We will be back later this week with Amanda Knox part two Till then, everyone stay safe out there. We'll see you soon.

Bye.