Murder: True Crime Stories - MYSTERY: The Smiley Face Killers

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

In this episode of Murder: True Crime Stories, Carter Roy investigates the Smiley Face Killers theory, a controversial claim that a hidden network of predators is responsible for the drowning deaths of dozens of young men across the United States. What authorities have often ruled accidental drownings, some investigators argue may be something far more coordinated and sinister. The theory points to clusters of college-aged men found in rivers and lakes, often after nights out with friends, with graffiti of smiley faces reportedly discovered near several recovery sites. Supporters believe the similarities are too consistent to ignore. Critics counter that the markings are common urban graffiti and that the circumstances reflect tragic but explainable patterns involving alcohol and water. As families search for answers and law enforcement agencies push back against the theory, the case raises unsettling questions about pattern recognition, confirmation bias, and the power of narrative in the age of viral true crime. Is there evidence of an organized killing network, or has a modern myth taken hold in the absence of certainty? Head over to our Murder True Crime Stories YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@MurderTrueCrimeStories If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @murdertruecrimestories To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi everyone, it's Carter. Exciting news. Video episodes of murder true crime stories are now on YouTube. Every Friday, I'll be dropping a full video episode going deeper into the cases that still haunt us, the mysteries that haven't been solved, and the stories that deserve more than just a headline. Same depth, same commitment to telling the real story. Now you can watch it. Subscribe at Murder True Crime Stories on YouTube.

to catch a new video episode every Friday. This is Crime House. Mysterious drownings, unanswered questions, two detectives who just couldn't let go, and a piece of graffiti that seemed to hold the key to unraveling everything. Some investigators are able to compartmentalize. When they're at work, they're laser-focused on cracking cases

and tracking down suspects. Once they clock out, they switch gears. They hang out with friends, spend time with family, whatever they have planned for the day. But not all detectives are able to leave their work at the office. On New Year's Eve, 1999, a 21-year-old college student named Brian Welzian left his apartment to celebrate with friends in downtown Chicago.

Three months later, his body washed up on the shores of Lake Michigan in Gary, Indiana, about 30 miles away. Investigators assumed Brian had gotten drunk, fallen into the lake, and drowned. But his body showed minimal signs of decomposition, which was strange, considering the police believed he'd been floating in the water for three months. In 2008, former New York City detectives, Kevin N. Gannon and Anthony Duarte came forward with a theory about what really happened to Brian. And they noticed his case was eerily similar to dozens of other young athletic white men across

America who had all mysteriously drowned. According to Gannon and Duarte, none of these deaths were accidental. They were coordinated attacks by a cabal of murderers. with a unique calling card, a graffiti smiley face. And Gannon and Duarte were determined to follow the trail all the way back to the killers who put them there. Welcome to the smiley face killers. People's lives are like a story.

There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate, review, and follow the show. And for ad-free access to every episode, subscribe to Crimehouse. on Apple Podcasts.

Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays, where I'm covering unsolved cases with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in multiple directions, and every theory feels like a possibility. Remember, these episodes are also on YouTube with full video. Just search for murder, true crime stories, and be sure to like and subscribe. Today, I'm looking into one of the weirdest and windiest conspiracy theories I've ever covered,

the smiley face killers. This theory was first coined by a retired NYPD detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte in 2006. They allege that from the late 90s through the 2010s, a gang of serial killers targeted and killed at least 45 college-aged men. The supposed victims all fit a similar profile. Nearly all of them were white, athletic, and had bright futures ahead of them. They all disappeared after drinking with friends only for their bodies to be discovered in bodies of water. And most interestingly, a large portion of the bodies were found near a very specific piece of graffiti.

A smiley face. To this day, we're wondering, was it a clue? or a coincidence. All that and more coming up. On February 16th, 1997, Patrick McNeil went out to the dapper dog bar in Manhattan. He needed to blow off a little steam, have a few drinks. Patrick was 20 years old, strong and athletic. In high school, he was the captain of his football team, but now he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life. He was in his second year studying accounting at Fordham University in New York City. Lately, though, he'd been considering a career in law enforcement. That said, he was a bit of a rebel. He'd recently gotten a tongue piercing and used his fake ID to get

into bars. At the dapper dog, Patrick had some beers. But according to friends, he seemed unusually disoriented, almost like he was on some kind of narcotics. But, Patrick didn't do drugs as far as anyone knew. And before long, Patrick was found on the bathroom floor unable to stop throwing up. People offered to help him get home, but he started stumbling back to his apartment on his own. Witnesses reported seeing a car falling close behind him, stopping whenever he stopped. Then, eventually, Patrick turned a corner. The car followed.

and no one ever saw him again. That's when Detective Kevin Gannon entered the picture. Kevin wasn't just any cop. He was something of a legend within the NYPD. He'd received two medals of valor for bravery and had over 1,000 felony arrests under his belt. Kevin had been working on the force for almost two decades, and he liked to think the system worked the way it was supposed to.

He believed his job was to help people find justice no matter the cost, until he was assigned Patrick's case. After Patrick's disappearance, Kevin started collecting evidence. He didn't have much to go on except for what people told him about the car that had followed Patrick. Bystanders claimed a man and woman were in the vehicle. Luckily one witness was. was able to provide Kevin with a partial license plate number. Kevin requested a search from the NYPD, but doing so without a full plate number was more complicated and therefore more expensive. It would have cost the department about $1,200.

Today that's around $2,500. To Kevin's disbelief, his superiors denied the request because of the price. suddenly the trail had gone cold and Kevin couldn't do anything about it. And that wasn't the only bad news Kevin received. Two months after he disappeared in April of 1997, Patrick's body washed up on the banks of the East River. He was found near pier in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn about 12 miles from where he was last seen. Authorities were quick to label the death an accidental drowning,

But Kevin wasn't convinced. The autopsy showed soft tissue breakdown and bloating, which is typical in cases where there's prolonged water exposure, and his lungs were reportedly filled with fluid, a key marker of drowning. But there were also a number of strange discrepancies, all of which indicated that Patrick might have died before he went into the water. For starters, Patrick was found only in his jeans, underwear, and socks. It's pretty unlikely that he took off his shirt and jacket before falling into the water,

especially in the middle of winter. It also didn't make sense that Patrick's body appeared where it did. Kevin thought the only way he would have shown up by that pier was if his body had been dumped there. According to the medical examiner, Patrick's body showed no signs of injuries, assault, or defensive wounds. But this didn't make sense to Kevin. There were marks on his neck, suggesting he had been bound and charring on his head and back, showing he may have been burned. But the smoking gun was his blood alcohol level. It was 0.12 when he died.

definitely enough for him to be drunk, but not as intoxicated as he reportedly was. In Kevin's eyes, the evidence told a clear story. He strongly believed that Patrick's death wasn't accidental. He had been drugged, abducted, tied up, and murdered before being dumped into the East River. When Kevin went to his superiors with his theory, they took him off the case and barred. him from investigating further. It was obvious to Kevin that they weren't interested in the truth. But he couldn't seem to stay away, and before long, he came across more information that

seemed to suggest Patrick had been a victim of foul play. On New Year's Eve, 1996, a month and a half before Patrick went missing in February in 97. Twenty-two-year-old Lawrence Andrews Jr. disappeared after night of drinking in New York City. His body was recovered from the East River 43 days later near the same spot as Patrick's. Five months after that, 19-year-old Joshua Bender went missing from his college campus in the city before being found on the banks of the same river. Like Patrick, both men disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and their bodies showed possible signs of foul play. But when Kevin brought this up to his bosses, they shut him down. Like Patrick, their deaths were ruled as drownings,

and that was final. And so Kevin tried to move on with his life. Kevin went back to work. Then in 1999, he became the head of the Bronx Homicide Task Force. After 20 years of service, he retired from the NYPD in 2001. In 2003, Kevin was diagnosed with cancer, but he wasn't one to back down from a fight. After a year and a half, his cancer was in remission. Kevin had a new lease on life, and he knew exactly where he wanted to start. Even though he'd been retired for a couple of years, Kevin had never forgotten about Patrick. He kept turning one question over and over in his head. How many other cases like Patrick's were there? Not just in New York, but all over the country.

Kevin started researching online, and in 2005, he learned something that sent a chill down his spine. Over the past few years, at least 25 young men disappeared across the Midwest under mysterious circumstances, only for them to turn up in bodies of water many miles away. All of them were supposedly accidental drownings, but after Patrick's case, Kevin wasn't so sure. He wanted to find out what really happened. And this time around, he knew he'd need some help. Kevin called up his friend and fellow retired NYPD detective Anthony Duarte

to ask if he was interested in teaming up. Kevin and Anthony had met at the Police Academy and were both highly decorated officers. Anthony knew all about Patrick's case and shared Kevin's frustration. So when he heard about these other drownings, he was eager to get involved. In April 2006, the two retired detectives reviewed the case files. They quickly realized that many of the men who'd gone missing in Minnesota and Wisconsin and shared a lot of similarities with the victims in New York. Most were athletic, young, white men who had gone out drinking and never came home.

Kevin continued to research, and a few months later, in October 2006, he found something that would change the course of his investigation. One of the men who'd gone missing in the Midwest was a student named Scott Raydell. He was a junior at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. In March 2006, Scott's body surfaced in the Mississippi River and was quickly ruled a drowning. But one person wasn't convinced by that explanation. A man named Doc Gilbertson. Dr. D. Lee Gilbertson, or Doc, was an assistant professor of criminal justice at St. Cloud where Scott had gone to school.

But Doc didn't just teach students about criminal investigations. He consulted with law enforcement officers about forensic victimology and crime analysis. When Doc read about Scott's case, it didn't pass the smell test. Just before he disappeared, Scott called his friends to tell them his location. When they went to find him, he was gone. Here's the thing. Scott was nowhere near the banks of the river the night he vanished. But according to investigators,

Scott had stumbled all the way there before accidentally falling into the water. It seemed a little fishy to Doc, so he did some research online. Doc started by searching for missing student drowned. To his surprise, Scott Radell's name wasn't the only one that came up. Hundreds of websites reported similar cases, and like Kevin, Doc started putting the pieces together. Together with some of his graduate students, Doc compiled the cases into a comprehensive spreadsheet and analyzed their similarities. Eventually, they published their research and gave a few presentations, but interest died down after a bit. Doc figured that was it.

Then in October 2006, Kevin found Doc's research. Soon enough, he and Anthony were on a plane to Minnesota. The three men shared information and realized they were all on the same page. Something didn't feel right about these cases. Maybe they were connected, and maybe they weren't. But one thing was for sure, the authorities weren't taking them seriously. Doc, Kevin, and Anthony were determined to get to the bottom of things. So before long, they formed a detective agency known as nationwide investigations.

And one of the first cases they focused on was Scott Radell's. And that's when they found a detail that didn't just transform the case. It would come to define it. A block away from where Scott's body was discovered. there was a piece of graffiti on the wall, a smiley face. After forming nationwide investigations in 2006, Kevin Gannon, Anthony Duarte, and Doc Gilbertson started going through each case file with a fine-toothed comb. If they were going to prove that these young men had been murdered,

they were going to need some hard evidence. Kevin personally financed a lot of their investigation. He even remortgaged his house to pay for their work, but he really believed they were onto something. If it could help the victim's loved ones, it was worth it. And it didn't take long to see results. The team started going to the crime scenes themselves. Unlike police, they didn't just look at where the bodies were discovered. Using GPS and water flow analysis, Kevin and...

and Anthony hoped to triangulate the locations where the bodies had entered the water. The more they did this, the more they started to see a familiar pattern. Many of the supposed sights had a smiley face spray painted nearby, but they weren't all the same. When investigating an Iowa River where one body was found, Kevin and Anthony discovered a smiley face that seemed different from the rest. It was done in red with its tongue sticking out, devil horns, and a cross on the forehead. Next to it was a note reading, evil, happy, smiley face man. After that, Kevin and Anthony decided the smiley faces were some kind of marker, one that was left behind by the people responsible for those supposed drownings. In the detective's minds, their graffiti was there to

to taunt the police. Even with all these connections, the scope of the case was enormous. Kevin, Anthony, and Doc had identified over 80 suspicious drownings from 1997 to 2006 that could be murders. They occurred in 25 cities in 11 different states, and the only real consistent location was in La Crosse, Wisconsin,

where eight students had allegedly drowned in the Mississippi River over a few years' time. Besides that, some of the disappearances happened on the same day across several different states. This got the team thinking that they weren't just dealing with a potential serial killer. They were dealing with groups of them. Problem was, they didn't know if these deaths were coincidental or a coordinated effort. And they didn't have much to go on. The best evidence they had was the graffiti.

In addition to the smiley faces, Kevin and Anthony had discovered at least 12 other tags at several of the dump sites. Many of these were gang affiliated, giving some credence to the idea that the attacks were connected. But then there was one that puzzled them. While investigating in Michigan, they found a piece of graffiti that read Sincinawa. They learned it was a Native American word, meaning, Rattlesnake or home of the young eagle. They couldn't figure out why the killers might have tagged it at the scene of the crime until they investigated the disappearance of Matt Kruzicki.

In late November or early December 2005, 24-year-old Matt disappeared from East Dubuque, Illinois. His last known location, Sincenewa Street. Sincenwa Street was in East Dubuque, but Matt was from Heartland, Wisconsin, nearly three hours away. According to Matt's friends, he was in East Dubuque to pick up his car. Apparently, Matt said he knew some people in the area and decided to go out partying with them while he was there. Nearly three months later, on March 18, 2006, his body was discovered in the Mississippi River near Dubuque. Matt's death was ruled an accidental drowning.

But his family wasn't so sure. Matt was staying at a hotel in Dubuque, Iowa, but went across the river to a dive bar in East Dubuque. The Mississippi runs through Illinois and Iowa, and according to Matt's dad, it almost seemed like Matt was lured across the river, then killed. After learning about Matt's case, Kevin and Anthony agreed with his dad,

and they thought the Sincenewa tag backed it up. But to prove their theory, they'd need to do a lot more than point to a piece of graffiti. Because now, they had to explain how a massive network of killers had been operating in over two dozen American cities without anyone suspecting them. The team believed the first component was pure evidence collection.

When bodies are discovered in water, it's hard to pin down the exact location of where they went in. The surrounding area isn't usually examined as thoroughly as a typical crime scene would be, and because of that, a lot of potential evidence in these cases, like the smiley faces, went unfound. Additionally, dumping a body into water can wash away a lot of evidence, including fingerprints and fibers. that meant a lot of the time, the autopsy results were a mixed bag. Most showed signs of drowning, but they also revealed possible evidence of foul play. According to Kevin and Anthony, police chose to go with the accidental drowning explanation because it was the easy option.

This way, they wouldn't have to put in the time and resources for a full-scale investigation. But there was one detail in particular that Kevin couldn't ignore. Many of the victims had gamma hydroxybutyric acid or GHB in their systems. This is a central nervous system depressant often used as a date rape drug. Kevin felt strongly that earlier victims, including Patrick McNeil, had unknowingly ingested the drug. That would explain why Patrick had seemed, as intoxicated as he did.

But testing for GHB didn't become common until the mid-2000s, which meant Kevin would never be able to prove that Patrick or any of those previous victims had been slipped the drug. Even so, the nationwide investigations team was eager to present their theory to law enforcement. In 2006, they started reaching out to the various police department. But almost always the police assured them that their investigations had been thorough. Kevin and Anthony weren't scared off so easily, though. They decided to take things a step further by going to the FBI. But the Bureau was just as uninterested in what they had to say.

And the FBI put out a statement saying, quote, To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. Kevin was incredibly frustrated, but he also wasn't surprised. In his mind, the FBI was either covering up for the police or for themselves. By 2008, the team had identified evidence of foul play in over 40 drowning deaths, and they knew they couldn't rely on law enforcement to move the needle forward. If they were going to find these killers, they needed to get the word out themselves.

But first, they needed something concrete. They needed a case that was for sure a homicide. That's when they came across Christopher Jenkins. Chris fit the profile of the other victims they had looked at, 21 years old, good looking, popular with job prospects ahead of him. On Halloween night in 2002, Chris went out drinking with friends in Minneapolis, but they got separated at the end of the night. Nearly four months later, he was found in the ice-cold waters of the Mississippi River,

still wearing his Halloween costume. Chris was discovered floating face up, which is extremely unusual for a drowning victim, These victims are almost always found face down. But even that discrepancy wasn't enough to stop the authorities from claiming Chris fell into the river on his own and drowned. Chris's family never bought the story. They believed someone else was involved. No one seemed to believe them until four years later in 2006 when Minneapolis police got a tip from an inmate. allegedly the man said Chris was killed, but he wouldn't give any other information.

The details are murky, but we know that after this, Chris's case was upgraded to a homicide. In 2007, the Minneapolis Police Department even named a suspect to the county attorney hoping to make an arrest, but the attorney's office said the case didn't have enough evidence to bring charges against anyone. Interest in Chris's case didn't die down, though. The people of Minneapolis wanted answers, and the nationwide investigations team felt they had them. On April 24, 2008, KSTP news reporter Christy Peel published an article titled, Chris Jenkins' murder connects dozens around country.

Christy interviewed Kevin, Anthony, and Doc for the story, According to them, Chris was murdered by the Smiley Face killers. Specifically, they thought he was stalked and drugged at a bar. He was then abducted, tortured, and killed before being dumped into the river. The nationwide investigations team thought Chris and the other victims were targeted because of their youth and success, which meant the killers were acting out of, jealousy. Kevin, Anthony, and Doc certainly knew there would be skepticism about their theory, but they hoped that at least a few people would believe what they were saying. And they ended up

reaching a lot more than a few people. The KSTP article went viral and eventually the team's story was international news. A lot of people suddenly knew about the smiley face killers and they wanted to help catch them before they could strike again. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board.

Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. There was evidence in the house and they would not listen to me. The Proof Podcast is back with a new case and a new season. And this time, the stakes are higher than ever before. A dying man is serving a life sentence for a murder he says he didn't commit. Did you ever question if they got the right person? I don't think I believed it at the time.

I don't think I believe it now. I'm scared to be sitting here in his damn chair talking about this shit. How many other cold cases were going to come forward? and go, hey, man, we need to look at my shit because I didn't do it. How many more do we have? You can listen now to season three of proof wherever you get your podcasts. And follow along with us as we reinvestigate the murder at the bike shop. Everything I tell you is the truth.

I'm not old shit in one way or the other. I hope I don't bring a ton of shit down on me. I really do. On April 24th, 2008, Christy Peel's article about the Smiley Face Killers theory went live. It was quickly picked up by national news sources like CNN and Fox News, and it only got bigger from there. Soon, detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte were guests on shows like Good Morning America and Larry King Live. They were able to clearly and effectively argue their case, breaking down their methodology. But there was another reason the story reached such a wide audience.

Kevin and Anthony presented the smiley face killers as an ongoing threat. According to them, other young men were at risk of being targeted. Many people across the country were suddenly terrified for themselves or for their children, but not everyone was buying into the theory. In cities where victims had allegedly been murdered, residents were frustrated with local officials. Still, the police asserted that their findings were accurate and ultimately not a single case of accidental drowning was reopened to address new evidence. The NYPD refused to reopen Patrick McNeil's case, even though his parents lobbied for them to do so.

When Larry King Live reached out to the department to ask about Patrick, they didn't respond to comment. Even in Minneapolis, the only city where an alleged smiley face death was ruled a homicide, the Minneapolis PD refused to consider the smiley face theory as a potential explanation for Chris Jenkins' death. The FBI went even further in refuting the theory. Once again, they said that most of the cases appeared to be alcohol-related drownings. and even when the nationwide investigations team got support from members of Congress, the FBI refused to reopen their investigations. However, the biggest criticism of the Smiley Face Killers Theory wasn't from law enforcement.

It was from the academic world. In 2010, the Center for Homicide Research published a report called Drowning the Smiley Face Murder Theory. And while the title was insensitive, the content was well researched. The report was assembled by nine leading criminologists. They laid out dozens of inconsistencies in the nationwide investigations team's methodology. To them, the biggest issue was the graffiti idea. And the report argued that none of the smiley faces matched each other,

and the symbol is incredibly common. They attributed the smiley faces to regular vandals, not a ring of killers. Additionally, they said the Sincinawa graffiti was a red herring that didn't necessarily line up with Matt Krasuski's death. To that end, they also disagreed with the idea that these deaths were in any way related. The deaths didn't fit a serial killer motive, and there was plenty of evidence to suggest that many of the deaths were accidental. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, where eight alleged victims had died, the police department released a report detailing at least 20 young men who survived drowning in the river. Many of them were dared to jump in by their friends,

and the La Crosse PD believed the eight students who died had done the same and just hadn't survived. Finally, the report dismissed the idea that the drownings weren't properly investigated or that water washes off. important evidence. They pointed out that it's still possible to obtain fiber and blood evidence from remains recovered in river drownings. And they called out Kevin in particular. The author said Kevin's theory came from his emotional connection to the cases, starting with Patrick McNeil. They thought this clouded his ability to think clearly and to remain impartial. Despite all that, Kevin, Anthony, and Doc remained comment. in their work. They knew there were some inconsistencies with the graffiti, and that was the nature of gang-specific tagging.

But before long, they seemed to get confirmation that these tags weren't random. In 2003, Todd had disappeared from a party in Muskegon, Michigan, and was found three weeks later in a private lake. It had been three years since Todd's death, and his family went to the cemetery to celebrate him. But when they arrived, they found something shocking. Someone had left a four-inch smiley face on Todd's grave. The Gives never found out who did it. It might have been someone playing a sick joke after seeing Kevin and Anthony on TV. But Kevin had a feeling the killers had put it there to taunt them,

and he wasn't going to let them get away with it. The team spent years putting together their own report, and in 2014, Kevin and Doc published case studies in drowning forensics, a 456-page book that comprehensively laid out the evidence in 14 of the Smiley-Face cases. The book brought renewed interest in the theory, and this time the team had hard evidence about who might have committed these murders. In the years since the team first went public, several inmates had come forward claiming to have information about the smiley face cases. One was a convicted murderer named Jeremy Alford. He told the FBI he had connections to a gang known as the dealers of death. The dealers of death allegedly committed more than 40 murders and covered them up as drownings. and one of the gang's members was named Zimili.

The team also allegedly had another jailhouse informant who explained the structure of the gang. The dealers of death supposedly operated in cells around a number of major cities, but there was a power structure among them. The informant explained that his team traveled to New York to, quote, straighten out a group that messed up and burned a guy. making it clear that the drowning wasn't an accident. This lined up with the death of Patrick McNeil, whose autopsy showed burning around his head.

But the critics still weren't convinced. They dismissed these jailhouse confessions as unreliable, and the FBI never made any arrests in the Dealers of Death case. When they first went public with their theory in 2000, Kevin and Anthony were trying to put a stop to the killings. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened. Since then, the team has identified at least 20 other deaths that fit the profile of a smiley-face murder. And even though police departments continue to dismiss the notion of the smiley-face killers,

the public has latched onto the story. Today, the theory is frequently shared online, especially on social media. platforms like TikTok. The idea of the Smiley Face Killers has also had a major impact on pop culture. There have been a number of documentaries produced on the subject and the horror film, Smiley Face Killers, written by American Psycho writer Brett Easton Ellis, was released in 2020. And while it's been almost a decade since Kevin and Anthony positively identified a potential smiley face victim. The killers are still brought up whenever a tragic drowning occurs. In 2025, 16 bodies were found drowned in Houston's bayous, including five in one week in September.

The victims had no connection to each other, and most were middle-aged, not the typical smiley-face victim profile. Still, the theory has been explored online, and Kevin has come to support the idea, even as city officials downplayed the threat of a serial killer. At the center of the smiley-face killers theory are the many young men who died too soon. Whether it was an accident or a murder, their lives were cut short, and their families will never be the same. Still, some of the theories early supporters have grown weary over time. Many of the victims' loved ones now feel that Kevin gave them empty hope. The father of one victim said,

I feel Kevin is like a sponge. He latches onto the families, sucks the life out of them, and when he has nothing else to suck, he dumps them. Unfortunately, we may never know exactly what happened to the men who died. It's a mystery that seems to defy explanation, but a coordinated network of serial killers is certainly a compelling one. Whatever the truth is, almost 20 years after Kevin and Anthony went public with their research, the Smiley-Face Killers theory still has a grip on the public consciousness.

If there really is a secret organization of serial killers out there, they've been getting away with murder for years. and they may still be out there. So the next time you go out on the town with your friends, keep an eye out, they may be watching you from the shadows, waiting to make their next move. Stay safe out there.

Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a crime house original, powered by Pave Studio. Here at Crimehouse, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram.

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Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertzowski, Lori Marinelli, Rob Teamstra, Sarah Camp, Nicolette Tavallero, Cassidy Dillon, Roman DeAngelo, Taylor Needson, and Russell Nash. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for listening to today's episode of murder, true crime stories. Not sure what to listen to next, check out America's Most Infamous Crimes

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