• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Smiley Face Killers

H

hokum6

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Apr 22, 2005
Messages
831
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24366804/
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S421846.shtml

This is a new one to me, usually keep an eye out for this kind of thing but just read about it in yesterday's Mirror.

A person or group of people are allegedly going around torturing and murdering college kids, then dumping their bodies in rivers and painting a smiley face nearby. This has supposedly been happening for 11 years resulting in 40 deaths, with the police categorising all but one as suicides or accidents. The only one they've called a murder, the victim was tortured in a van and then dumped.

They seem to think it's a gang. I've not seen any explanation as to why they think this. Killers working in pairs are unusual but not uncommon. Can't think of any cases off the top of my head involving more than two perps, unless you count cult-related incidents like the Manson family. Two killers operating for this long would be unprecedented, more than two is hard to believe. The use of a van as a mobile torture chamber is something the killer(s) may have copied. The vile Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris had a van they called 'Murder Mack', Steven Pennell (the 'I-40 Killer') also had a van he used for rape.

For them to be killing in so many different locations is also unusual. Another comment the investigators have made is that it's a group of murderers located in different states. I'm assuming they have some evidence for this because it's completely unknown and quite unbelievable.


Incidentally, The Mirror tried to link it with Alan Moore's Watchmen graphic novel. Presumably the writer of the piece has never actually read Watchmen.
 
:shock: This is about the most outrageous story I've ever heard. I had to watch the video just to believe that it wasn't a fabrication by something like the Weekly World News. Try to conjecture this sort of operation...what is their motive? To punish athletic, popular college men. Why? How are they operating as a unit? Internet? What about the comment by the victim's brother who said he was being chased? I wished he could have elaborated. Very interested to keep an eye on this one.
 
Here's the thing:

I've read this story before, but not on the news. I was sitting on the couch in the study and it was a short story. In a hardback, I think. The van, the drowning, the athletic college kids dying "accidentally" after a night on the town - they were all there, for sure. I think, however, that the bridge was always the same one and fraternity hazing was involved. It might have been in a mystery anthology or it might have been a supernatural story (in which case many of the later murders were revenge by the ghost of the original victim). Significant grafitti may or may not have played a role. It might have been in a library book or it might have been in a book I own, or owned at the time (we've been downsizing the book holdings).

That's all I've got, and I read so many books, and have so little concept of when I might have read it, that it isn't nearly enough.

The victimology doesn't seem to me that odd. It's exactly similar to the victimology for the Matamoras brujeria murders, when drunken college boys were chosen because they were so easy to lure to their dooms. If the series is real (and the graffito is an unconvincing link as presented, but news stories seldom tell you everything you need to make up your mind), there might be a sexual motive - many sexual predators are highly mobile - or a desire to exert power over the wedgy-giving class represented by the middle-class jock, or, as with the brujeria, the tried-and-true method of drunk-luring is a mere convienent method of victim choice for some purpose that just needs a victim.

It's possible, but I can't call it convincing, and I wish I could give you the title and author of that story!
 
that sound like he'd watched fight club too many times james... iirc there's a bit in that where they bomb or arsonise a skyscraper so that the burning bits make up a smiley face...
 
I'd have tagged it as viral marketing (Watchmen movie is out later this year) but the people mentioned in the article are real, and it'd be a pretty sick marketing exercise.
 
The Watchmen smiley face was the prototypical 70s yellow smiley with a bullethole in the forehead, not like the one in the picture at all.
 
PeniG said:
The Watchmen smiley face was the prototypical 70s yellow smiley with a bullethole in the forehead, not like the one in the picture at all.
Click to expand...

No bullet-hole, it was a bloodstain.

watchmen_smiley-719832.gif


The Mirror was just trying to court controversy by blaming it on a comic, never mind that there is no link aside from the smiley face, which as you point out is a typical 70s design.

painy2 said:
Forum discussion
Click to expand...

Interesting post on that thread:

My daughters boyfriend, Chris Hansen, drowned in Northern Mi Oct of 85. He fits the profile to a T. Leaving a bar, 22yrs old, walking home because he was drunk.....Found later dead in a river. It never made sense, he would have had to wade out into the river before it was over his head. There was no bridge to jump off, no reason for him to be near the water. Who wades into cold ass Northern Michigan water to attempt suicide to drown by laryngeal spasm? But the police still called it an "apparent suicide". He was a computer Keek and I believe that is how this gang operates. Now that this news is breaking, they will be reading these blogs. So if your out there, you smiley gang bastards, we will be hunting you down!!!!!!
Click to expand...
 
in reply to hokum if the killings have been happening for 11 years and all but one was deemed suicide or accidents and there have been over 40 deaths, surely the police or whoever are ivestigating the crimes should have by now put together an mo for the crimes and the killer(s)?

if they have similarities and all have that signature smiley face then that surely links all of them and smoe killers do make it look like suicide or accident to cover up so they can carry on for longer what they are doing,

even if the murders are located in diffrent states there is no law stopping someone travelling from state to state to commit another murder
 
goth13girl666 said:
in reply to hokum if the killings have been happening for 11 years and all but one was deemed suicide or accidents and there have been over 40 deaths, surely the police or whoever are ivestigating the crimes should have by now put together an mo for the crimes and the killer(s)?
Click to expand...

The ex-policemen investigating have already got an MO. If what they're saying is true, these kids are being kidnapped whilst inebriated, assaulted (sexually or physically) then thrown in a river to clear away any forensic evidence. What they're also going to be looking for is a signature. The MO is how a crime is committed, but an MO can alter as a perp become more sophisticated or their circumstances change. For serial killers, the signature is something they have to do to satisfy their needs. In this case the smiley face graffiti could very literally be a signature, but it would be quite a bizarre one, usually a signature is something they do to a victim to sate their lust. If the smiley face is the common link between these cases then it suggests that they are marking their territory and/or taunting the victim's families and police. Another signature would be the choice of victim - the two obvious reasons for choosing young males would be that the perp has something against stereotypical drunk college guys (suggesting a history of bullying, perhaps?), or they are sexually-driven attacks. It could be that the victim's all have similar builds, hair colour and so on.

The MO here would appear to be obvious from everything we're told in the news articles, and although it says a lot about the killers (they aren't stupid, for one thing, the crime scenes sound as though they're very clean), finding an MO isn't the magic key to solving a crime.

even if the murders are located in diffrent states there is no law stopping someone travelling from state to state to commit another murder
Click to expand...

I'm fairly sure travelling to another state to murder someone is against the law ;). Of course there is nothing stopping them from travelling across state lines, but it's an interesting aspect of the case. The simple conclusion would be that the killer(s) lead a nomadic lifestyle, but as I assume the investigating officers have already looked at that angle there must be something they're not saying about the crimes that leads them to believe it is a group of people rather than the same one or two killers moving around. That would be very unusual indeed.
 
One Bizarre Theory About Shane Montgomery’s Disappearance

Last week I wrote about the West Chester student’s disappearance. Then I heard about the “Smiley Face Killers.”

“Saw your post check this out,” the email was headed, so of course I clicked — and found a link, and then this:

i’ve been following this for about 7 years now with the smiley face killers there is plenty on the internet but this is a start there was kid booth who was found in ridley and another Guevera who was found in a Wachtung NJ lake with the same MO​

I used to work for the Trentonian I believe there to be some kind of religious connection and or a native american one as well with the name sinsinawa used often

And there I went, down the rabbit hole.

The post my emailer referred to was a short piece I'd written on the disappearance of Shane Montgomery, the West Chester University student who on Thanksgiving Eve vanished off the streets of Manayunk following an evening of drinking at Kildare’s Irish Pub. My interest in the case was personal — I have kids Shane’s age, and they’d been out drinking on Thanksgiving Eve — and professional: What journalist isn’t intrigued by a disappearance like that?

I’d never heard of the “Smiley Face Killers,” though. The link the emailer sent led to a website, Nationwideinvestigations.us, established by two former New York cops who’d gotten lots of press over the years, including from names like Geraldo Rivera and Anderson Cooper, in regard to a theory they’d developed linking a number of disappearances of young men across the country and declaring them murders. There are intriguing similarities in the more than 40 deaths: The young men were popular and athletic, and had been out drinking at the time they disappeared. And graffiti depicting smiley faces had reportedly been found near where their purported killers dumped their victims into bodies of water.

The FBI, several police departments and the Center for Homicide Research have all refuted the notion that the cases are related, and that they were murders. (In fact, the police department in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where eight of the deaths took place, pointed out that males make up 90 percent of all drowning victims ages 18 to 24.) But this is the age of the Internet, and so the theories have only become more complex and convoluted over time, spreading to include deaths in 25 cities and 11 states. There are flashes of intriguing details: religious medals removed by the killers from bodies; torture and multiple body repositionings; that scrawled, enigmatic Native American word “sinsiniwa” … And there’s a Smiley Face Killers Facebook page.

There's no doubt there are odd coincidences among the "Smiley Face Killers" narratives. Take this account of a 2012 disappearance:
Click to expand...
http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/12/08/shane-montgomery-victim-smiley-face-killers/
 
Worth scrolling down for the comments on that one, where knowledge of the bar and neighbourhood seem more useful than the author's linking the case to a phantom group of murderers.
 
That debunking page is interesting. Sounds plausible to me.

As I've mentioned before, some intoxicated men are drawn to open water. Any police officer will tell you that. They often want to urinate into it. Being drunk, they are likely to overbalance and fall in, and sadly may drown quickly.

When I hear of a man going missing after a night out I always wonder if he has done this. The man who disappeared in Prague recently was found in the river, as I hinted was likely on our thread about disappearances. No foul play is necessary.

The relatives may find it hard to believe that their loved one has died in a drunken accident but that's usually the case.
 
Chap left a party I was at a couple of years ago, and was found next day in the river; happens every couple of weeks up here.
 
The River Ribble that runs through Preston was supposed to take a life once every seven years as I seem to recall reading somewhere previously.
 
The idea of life-demanding rivers is intriguing and unnerving. I don't know of any such legends in the US, but in England there is river that supposedly demands a life every year. The river has the same name as my own real name, which has me convinced that if I get near this river it's going to suck me right in. Call me superstitious, but if I ever go to England I'm staying far, far away. Not taking any chances with that one.

Erm...that has nothing to do with the smiley face kllers. Sorry. :oops:
 
Oh yes, we've mentioned the bloodthirsty nature of various rivers here before.
Quiet Flows the Aire
The Aire is slow,
The Wharfe is lithe;
Where Aire takes one,
The Wharfe takes five.

Bloodthirsty Dee
Each year needs three;
But bonny Don
She needs none
Click to expand...
and so on.
 
Recently I saw an episode of Medical Detectives which featured a case in the US where the killer had drawn a smiley face on his victims body in their own blood. Think this took place quite some time ago. There was a twist when an innocent man was arrested and by coincidence, he also drew smiley face on a police application form. I say coincidence as the police had decided not to release the information regarding the smiley face to the public.
 

I draw a smiley face on the page of my soduko book every time I solve a puzzle - does this make me a bad person? ;)
 
GHB probably would not be in the blood of too many young men its not that popular. I'm still inclined to think death by drunken stumble though. But in my years of taking graffiti pictures I never see any happy faces. They looked pretty ominous too. I do predict one day a group of serial killers will meet from online contact. Internet helped cannibal find a meal its not impossible...
 
Dont know if anyones mentioned it, but it reminds me of Red John from The Mentalist, i know its fiction, but, great series.
 
Has someone already posted this 5 day old story?
I'm going to stick this in here as this story has some similarities with the OP story. This is from New Zealand.

LINK

The Police Are Now Hunting For The 2 Creepy Figures That Appeared In This Video

A couple of friends in Auckland, New Zealand, were filming a skit for a school project when a camera operator noticed a strange pair of figures walking out of the forest. They appeared to be two young people, one male, one female, both wearing bizarre masks to hide their identity. As they emerged closer, the camera noticed that both were armed.
Click to expand...

Reminded me of The Purge. After G'oolin' it I found a Faily Wail story on it and the turned themselves in.

Link

A strange masked couple, thought to be armed, have handed themselves into police after terrifying local residents.

A man and a woman wearing white hockey masks stalked parkland areas in the city of Auckland, New Zealand, for up to three weeks according to reports.
Click to expand...

So in the words of Ian Fletcher from the show W1A...

"Right. So that's all good then."
 
Ulalume said:
The idea of life-demanding rivers is intriguing and unnerving. I don't know of any such legends in the US, but in England there is river that supposedly demands a life every year. The river has the same name as my own real name, which has me convinced that if I get near this river it's going to suck me right in. Call me superstitious, but if I ever go to England I'm staying far, far away. Not taking any chances with that one.

Erm...that has nothing to do with the smiley face kllers. Sorry. :oops:
Click to expand...
I vaguely remember something to do with this and the Thames (the river I grew up on the banks of). In that it had a deity associated with it (Old Father Thames) who used to demand sacrifices. I can take a guess at the river you're talking about, which had an associated goddess whose Latin name is now a popular woman's name? I don't know about the legends though. Perhaps this deserves its own thread.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top