Every Town - Chicago Has A Serial Killer On The Loose

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Since 2022 16 bodies in total have been discovered in various bodies of water there, mainly Lake Michigan but also in the Chicago river, and it’s prompted a lot of questions from the public as they try and grapple with the true nature behind these tragic deaths. And Many are fearing that perhaps a serial killer may be out there and police are failing to do connect the dots.  👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 💀 Exclusive Videos, Podcasts & Perks: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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coms bar records. If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything. in between. With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime. Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot

cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every town has a dark side. Over the past couple of years, a theory has emerged along the streets and waterways of Chicago, Illinois, but has ignited serious concern and fear among the residents there. In particular, those who should be most weary are young men in their early 20s, because that's been the majority of the profile on these victims. Since 2022, 16 bodies in total have been discovered in various bodies of water there,

mainly Lake Michigan, but also in the Chicago. River, and it's prompted a lot of questions from the public as they try and grapple with the true nature behind these tragic deaths. Many are fearing that perhaps a serial killer may be out there, and police are failing to connect the dots. While accidents and coincidences seem to be common explanations for such tragedies, the pattern and frequency at which these incidents are happening have led many to suspect a more sinister force at work. What's most alarming about all this, this, but this isn't the first time it's happened. It's a first for the city of Chicago, pulling up so many bodies, but all across the country in various pockets, we've all seen

this play out before. It's primarily occurred in the Midwest, which does connect these Chicago deaths in a way, but also on the East Coast. And since the late 90s, it's been alleged that up to 50 young men may have been killed in this exact same manner. It's the work of an underground gang or network of killers that drugs their victims while they're out at bars or parties before snatching them off into the night. And once they're done with them, be it a few days later or even months, they dump them in various bodies of water to wash away the evidence, make it appear to have been an accident. The name of that gang is the smiley face killers.

Hey guys, it's Andrew, and thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Everytown. But today we're going to explore the possibility that they're very well. could be a serial killer currently operating out of Chicago. We'll see if they connect the broader deaths all across the U.S. And because all this is an unsolved mystery and just a theory, you yourself can draw your own conclusions by the end of it. Are the Chicago deaths tragic accidents that coincidentally occurred one right after the next in an unnatural way?

Or is there a person or people out there killing individuals and leaving them in the water? Let's head over to Shy Town now. Learn about what exactly is going on over there, as many people deeply troubled. It's unfortunate, obviously, but people drown all the time. Before we dive into this case, I want to give you all some statistics, so we have some sort of baseline to work from. It'll give you a better understanding into why what's happening in Chicago has raised so many red flags.

Worldwide each year, you're looking at around 320,000 drowning deaths. In the U.S., it's somewhere around 3,500 or 4,000 typically, depending on the year, of course. That equates to about 10 per day. And of those, around 25% are children under the age of 4. About 40% of them happen to people aged 17 and younger. That means that 2,250 are adults, and that's a lot. However, when you pull back and compare that to the grand scheme of the population of the U.S., it's actually a very small fraction.

In general, each drowning is an isolated incident, meaning there's nothing to connect them to one another. One occurs in this state and one and another. Really, if you're not local to where they happen, the stories never tend to make national headlines. Just a sad accident that occurs when someone out on the water injures themselves or gets knocked out and never resurfaces.

Perhaps they were jumping off a cliff or a small railroad bridge for fun and landed in a spot that was too shallow. It could be someone visiting the ocean, not knowing the lay of the land, and getting caught up in a riptide and pulled out to sea, or a person in a river or a lake that just never learned to swim all that well and had an error in judgment. There are many other reasons and whatever it is.

These stories become a blip on the local news, and then the general public just continues on with their lives. In Chicago, though, these blips started to happen so fast. that they just couldn't be ignored. It was unlike anything the city had ever seen before. Every couple of weeks, there it was again, front and center, another person missing under mysterious circumstances, only to be discovered later, being pulled lifeless from the water.

Often there were no other signs of trauma, other than the cause of death being from drowning, so outwardly it didn't look like foul play. But really, how many people have to die in the same exact way before you start to question what's really going on. It was all very eerie, and before you knew it, the entire town of Chicago was asking themselves exactly that. In May of 2022, Daniel Soto and Natalie Brookson were pulled out of Lake Michigan.

A month later, Awood Brown was too. In December, Peter Salvino and Christoph Zuber were also pulled out of the lake. In February of 2023, it was Anthony Rucker being found in the Chicago. River. Then in March, it was Joel Ordouno. By April, it was Richard Garcia, and then Seamus Gray. In May, an unidentified woman, and then in June, young man named Noah Einos. So one after another, after another, these people weren't friends or relatives of one another, and they weren't connected in any sort of way while they were alive, but in death, they were all sharing the same story. They were young people in their 20s, in college or college educated, who had been seen out on the town before they vanished and then, of course, were discovered.

The authorities seemed to think these were simply unrelated accidents. These individuals had too much to drink and fell or even tried to go for a swim when tragedy struck. But if that was the truth, then why doesn't this happen all the time? If it were just the nature of the landscape of Chicago, where people liked up to play. party and swim in the nearby lake, why just now were so many turning up dead? While the court of public opinion chimed in on that, of course, it spread fast over social media. The most logical conclusion most of them came up with, or at least the most interesting one, is that these people were being hunted down and ultimately murdered.

On December 17th of 2022, 25-year-old Peter Salvino, a doctorate student at Northwestern University, attended a house party at the North Geneva Terrace apartment. By all accounts, he had a good time there and was in high spirits, according to witnesses who saw him. He left that night alone to head home, presumably, and that was the last time anyone saw him alive. Immediately the next day was reported missing by family and friends. Investigators were also able to find the last location where his cell phone pinged,

which was near Dversie Harbor, and it so happens that was just a short distance away. from the party he was at. Three days later on Tuesday, December 20th, just past five in the afternoon, Marine units assisting in the search, then found Peter's body floating in Lake Michigan along the 2400 block of North Cannon Drive. Again, this location was pretty close to where his cell phone at last ping. Peter's passing was the second death that happened in Lake Michigan that month. And just a week before he disappeared, on December 7th, officers responded to a a call about an unresponsive young man found in those waters near the 1,000 block of North Dusaybill Lakeshore Drive. He was brought in to a nearby hospital, but unfortunately was

pronounced dead. He would go on to be identified as 21-year-old aspiring businessman Christoph Zuzberg, who had just started working in the Chicago area a month prior. Investigations revealed that the last time Christoph was seen was the evening of December 3rd when he was at a holiday party happening at Howl at the Moon, which is a large bar in event space. Several people saw him there, though no one was certain when he exactly left. The next day his friend checked in to see if he was back at his place, but found his room empty. The two deaths have not officially been linked, but there are obvious similarities. Young men who were at parties, gone missing, and later found in the same body of water. Perhaps these two young men somehow accidentally

fell into the lake, that's most certainly a possibility. But it's when you extrapolate on this pattern, all the bodies showing up in the same place, but it becomes harder and harder to justify them as simply unfortunate mistakes. 24-year-old Joel Orduno vanished after being spotted for the last time at his apartment in Logan Square on February 17th of 2023. Law enforcement was notified. It was nearly a month later when the grim discovery of Ordouno's body was, body was made in the Chicago River near North Levitt Street, 2,700 block. The Chicago PD has officially concluded their death inquiry in this case, stating that the circumstances surrounding Ordu know's death are deemed non-criminal. So, case closed, according to

them. In a separate incident, Seamus Gray, a 21-year-old sailor in the Navy went missing after leaving a tavern in Waukegan on March 18. The last sighting of Gray was at approximately 1.35 a.m. exiting Abiza Nightclub at 17 North Genesee Street, roughly 40 miles north of Chicago, but very close to the water's edge of Lake Michigan. Along was raised when he failed to return to Naval Station Great Lakes for his 2 a.m. scheduled arrival. CCTV footage obtained from outside the nightclub reveals gray interacting with a group of individuals shortly before 2 a.m. During one moment captured on camera, Gray is depicted on the ground, and subsequently, it appears an individual from the group attempts to take Gray's wallet, only to toss it back towards them.

Gray is later seen in the footage, running away into a side alley. Adrian Hernandez, the nightclub manager, recounted during a press briefing that Gray had been to the nightclub twice in the early hours of Saturday, but he was ultimately kicked out because he was too drunk. On April 19th, Gray's remains were located by ComEd employees performing standard maintenance near the harbor were reported spotting a corpse in the lake. The county coroner's office reported that no notable injuries were discovered on Gray's person. The toxicology exam identified as blood alcohol level to be 0.14, above the legal threshold for operating a vehicle, but beneath the level regarded as potentially lethal by health care professionals.

In another instance, 26-year-old Noah Enos attended a concert with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard at the Salt Shed in Chicago, along with a co-worker on June 12. Nicole Weege, Eno's girlfriend, said that Noah stayed in touch with her throughout the event via text and Snapchat, including sharing a snapshot from inside the venue. Our final communication from Noah was received around 9 p.m. that night. His phone died around an hour after that. Five days later, in the north branch of the Chicago River, Noah's body would be discovered near the 1,300 block of North Elston Avenue, not far from the concert venue. Nicole would go on to talk to reporters saying, I know Noah wasn't the first one to go missing and be found in the river, and I sure as is Ish hope that he's the last.

And publicly, the Chicago police weren't treating these cases as possibly being connected, but not all law enforcement felt that way. way. Some may have been pressured not to talk about it. Tracy Walder, a former CIA and FBI agent, thinks, like many do, that there's just too many dots that connect here. There definitely could be a serial killer at work. And Tracy has said, in a case like this, there are so many similar patterns right across the board. So it's not just a coincidence anymore. Articles and social media posts from locals began churning. Some speculated that maybe the authorities actually knew more than they were leading on.

They didn't want to make a big deal out of this whole thing for two specific reasons. One, of course, was that they didn't want to create a panic in the city. Tourism was already low with COVID lockdowns just being lifted, but beyond that, the general stigma of violence that envelops the city is one that's hard for Chicago to shake. So, in order to help their cause, at all costs, it was best if they could, to avoid proclaiming at this current point in time to the world that, yes, in fact, there is a serial killer on the loose. Come on and visit. The other reason was more tactical, and authorities wanted

this killer to feel comfortable, as if the police had no clue who they were or where they'd strike next, because that would increase the chances of the killer slipping up or getting even more brazen, which would in turn mean a greater chance of them being conned. People also made the connection to the long running theory of the infamous underground gang known as the Smiley Face Killer. These people have been abducting and murdering young men for more than two decades, allegedly. So was it possible they were currently in Chicago there to continue their reign of terror? Well, all the victims in Chicago fit the profile they go for. College guys gone missing after a night out on the town, only to be found later in the water.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, the Smiley Face Killer's theory originated from the investigations of retired New York City detectives, Kevin Gannon, and Anthony Duarte, who in the late 90s and early 2000s observed a disturbing pattern in the drownings of young men in several states. They posited that these were not isolated incidents or accidents, but the work of a nationwide syndicate of serial killers, leaving behind their macabre's signature, a smiley face and graffiti near the locations where the victims were believed to have entered the water or were found. Hence, the origins of the name.

And there were several stories out of Wisconsin and also in the Boston area, too. Places with densely populated college towns, which would be an ideal hunting ground to find their targets. In total, 45 people have been linked to the Smiley Face Killers, though there certainly could be several more. The idea on how they operate is that once they sniff out their victim who's out partying, they'll drug them in order to get them subdued enough to comply. They wait for the drugs to kick in, and for them to be stumbling. They'll get them alone outside, close to a vehicle, or place where they can abduct them, at which point they just take them away.

Their motives are unclear, but it's been speculated that there might be a sadomasochistic element to the whole thing. A sort of devil-worship, ridding the world of those who appear to have it all. It's believed the victims are water-bordered as part of this process, perhaps as a way to cleanse them. Sometimes it goes to the point of drowning. Whether it's days or weeks later, once they are dead, the bodies will be dumped in a body of water and recovered. It sounds a bit far-fetched, but there has been evidence to back this theory up. For example, on a few occasions the missing person has been found months later and yet their body is in relatively good condition. Meaning that if they left a bar and perhaps accidentally fell into a body of water that same night,

If they're found weeks later, how could it be that they weren't in worse condition? On top of that, when a person drowns over the next few days, the gases inside expand, and you get what emergency responders refer to as a floater. The gas bloats the body and brings it to the surface, and it's a telltale sign that someone has drowned, and yet some of the victims show no sign of that at all. The belief being that they were killed elsewhere, as mentioned, and then dropped off only to be discovered before the bloating has taken place.

And this whole theory gained traction through a lot of media coverage. Anderson Cooper did a piece on it, and so did Geraldo Rivera. Documentaries, books, and numerous articles have explored the possibility of such a group's existence, examining the evidence presented by the proponents of the theory and counterarguments as well. To this day, from time to time, the idea of the Smiley-Face Killers being back at it again, will pop up anytime a young man is found in water. Recently, there was the sad story of 22-year-old Riley Strain from the University of Missouri, went missing after getting kicked out of a bar in Nashville, Tennessee.

And he would go on to be found in a river a few days later. CCTV footage that was pieced together showed he wasn't in the right frame of mind, and by all accounts, he must have fallen in and couldn't get back out. But online, people mentioned once again that it could be the infamination, smiley face killer gang at work here. In the context of the Chicago cases, Smiley face killers theory is resurfaced once again, the similarities in the circumstances of their deaths,

plus the location of being in the Midwest, have fueled these speculations, though there is an absence of the graffiti or other definitive evidence connecting the incidents to the purported gang. Overall, experts remain divided on the validity of the Smiley Face Killer's theory, as they are divided in the same way,

on the cases in the windy city. And some argue that it draws attention away from more plausible explanations related to personal accidents, mental health crises, or individual acts of violence. Others, however, see it as a call to reevaluate unsolved cases and consider the possibility of a more sinister pattern at play. And so, in the end, the real question becomes, is there any validity to these claims of people being murdered by drowning? Well, clearly, it's impossible to save it.

for sure. And with so many cases, 61 in total, officially if you combine the smiley face ones and the Chicago ones, it's certainly possible file play happening in some, but not all. In terms of the smiley face graffiti where the gang gets its name from, well, a smiley face is one of the most common images you'll find spray painted anywhere. You may even see them so often that at this point you don't even notice them. But go down to any railroad track, bridge, or concrete wall along the water's edge, and look around and you'll find one. So, that being the mark they leave behind is less likely their calling card

and more likely that they're just all over the place. As far as body is not appearing to have been deceased for as long as they have been missing, well, in the northeast and the Midwest, it gets really, really cold in the winter. When meat freezes, it slows down the decomposition process, which experts point out is exactly what happened in some of those cases. Specifically moving on to Chicago, of course nowadays there's tons of cameras everywhere and so in order to solve these drownings, police were able to tap into that. In the case of 25-year-old Peter Salvino, using their own cameras around the city, police could see him leave the party at the Geneva

Terrace apartment. Even though his apartment was north or there, he headed east towards the water. He made it through the harbor parking lot and then essentially stumbled right into the water. After that, he swam for a bit, but ultimately didn't make it out. Police found him because they looked at the footage and then went to check out where it happened, and there he was. Christoph Steubert was the exact same thing. He was seen walking towards the water and falling in. His body was found on the beach right near to where all that happened.

Daniel Soto and Natalie Brooks in. Well, they were boyfriend and girlfriend who went missing in late April. Likely, it's believed they got intoxicated and decided to go for a swim or dared each other to jump in, with the water still too cold, hypothermia quickly set in. And maybe one fell in and the other tried to save them. One way or another, they ended up in there, but the chances of it being a killer is less likely than an accident. And in terms of numbers, and the amount of drownings is not up to. in Chicago, one might believe, based on these incidents. In fact, year over year, it's actually

lower in 2022 and 2023 than it was the previous four years. It's just that the ones we talked about today happened in a short span of time and got people's attention, which means the media is going to exploit that. It was like a mini case of mass hysteria. Everyone loves a good murder mystery, and people also generally want answers to strange things happening. So it makes sense that they'd turn to creating stories and phantom gangs of killers to help explain away these tragic deaths. But in reality, it looks like the idea of a clever serial killer being on the loose is a little bit far-fetched. Unfortunately, people, especially those in their 20s, go out to bars and drink a lot. Sometimes too much, as they've yet to learn their limit or don't care.

You've maybe been there before yourself on an occasion or two, and at the very least, I'm sure you've seen it. Someone's stumbling, trying to make their way, getting kicked out of a place while they have a hard time telling left from right and up from down. There could be a gang of killers targeting young college-age men, or the killer could be alcohol and perhaps some other substances. These were, by all accounts, good people who had one too many, and if you're in that condition, you could easily stumble down an embankment that leads to the water. Trying to swim in that condition is less than ideal, and at some point they got tired and unfortunately gave up,

as was witnessed on CCTV in one of the cases. The idea of a killer gang at large doesn't really help the reality of the situation, but it can help people cope. When the insane idea starts to make the rounds, and it becomes a force that's hard to stop, Is it more interesting that people are out there hunting down victims, drowning them, which washes away all the evidence, or that someone drank too much and drowned? We are a strange bunch in the way we deal with problems and like to tell stories. Of course, that's all just my opinion.

Maybe there is a giant gang of powerful people out there doing nefarious things at will for their own advancements and pleasure and nobody, not even the police, can stop them. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you all enjoyed it. If you like the podcast, we're putting out, there's a lot more content we have for you to listen to. Go check out our other podcast called Scary Mysteries. And for exclusive podcasts, each and every week, plus other perks. Just go check us out at patreon.com slash scary mysteries. We get into some even darker content.

Thanks for tuning in today. Remember to come back next week for another episode filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.