Detectives Claim ‘Smiley Face’ Serial Killing Gang Make Drownings Look Like Accidents

Normally when you think of a serial killer, you contemplate a shadowy figure stalking the night alone, creating horrible havoc for a chosen victim before taking their life. Most of those harmed meet their end by being strangled, or at the point of a gun or a knife.

Which is what makes what may be going on in the U.S. so chilling. Two former New York City detectives are sure they’re tracking not one murderer but a gang of serial killers who have joined together to slay the innocent. The weapon of choice is also unusual: water. All the victims have met their end in rivers or streams and all appear to have been accidents or suicides.

But the Manhattan ex-cops have come to the conclusion they’ve been anything but. They first became suspicious after a young man named Patrick McNeill was found drowned in the Hudson River back in 1997.

He’d been out drinking and his death was labeled a suicide. When his parents told Det. Kevin Gannon it couldn’t have happened that way, he began to probe the incident.

Since then, there have been at least 40 similar cases in 11 states, all apparent accidents or suicides that have surfaced across the U.S. The former cop believes all are connected to a group who roam the country targeting people for murder while cleverly making it look like a tragic mishap.

He’s so sure he’s right he’s even mortgaged his own home to keep the investigation at full boil all these years. All the deaths have striking similarities. Each involves good looking athletic college-age victims with good grades. Nearly all had been drinking before their deaths. And almost all of them were discovered in the winter months in half frozen rivers or streams.

Now the detective believes he’s found a key clue that proves his theory – a smiley face symbol drawn near many of what he terms the crime scenes.

Cops across the states involved are skeptical but the parents of the growing list of victims are backing the maverick investigators chasing the theory that the gang is still out there – and getting away with it.

The parents of Adam Falcon, a Canton, N.Y. college student who drowned in 2004, are among those backing the theory. But police in the town say their probe shows there’s simply no evidence to support the contention.

“There was a very in-depth investigation,” states Police Chief Alan Mulkin. “When Adam’s body was eventually discovered by the divers, it was treated as a crime scene … From our end, our investigation is complete. I’m very confident that as far as these New York City police detectives [are concerned] … I don’t know who they are, I don’t know what they’re looking at. I’m not aware of any of their evidence.”

He notes there was no so-called ‘smiley face’ at the scene and nothing to indicate the student’s death was anything but a tragic accident.

Still, Gannon is refusing to give up, but admits he and his partner are running out of money to fight the case and they’re asking the FBI to get involved. So far, the Bureau says there’s no evidence to support their contention and they have no intention of pouring any resources into a case they don’t believe is real.