Crime Essay Sample about Smiley Face Killer

When 24 year old William Hurley called his girlfriend to come pick him up early from a Boston Bruins game, explaining that he was very exhausted from his long day at work, he explained to her that his phone battery was low but before it died he said that he was on 99 Nashua Street. Minutes later his girlfriend arrived, however Hurley was nowhere to be found.. Six days later Hurley's body was found in the Charles River, the cellphone used to call her was smashed located nearby the dumped body. Hurley's death was eventually declared an undetermined drowning and police stated that they had no evidence of foul play. Many people believe that this case and many more almost identical to it are just accidents, however they may have been mistaken.

The “smiley face killer'' is a serial killer connected to more than 40 college white men all over the country that was staged into looking like accidental drownings. They call him or even them the “smiley face killer” they are known as because around the location of the deaths there's a smiley face painted on a rock or tree or other surface. “In most of these cases, we don't know where the men went into the water or where they actually died” (Nile Cappello) . Each woods that the bodies were found in were more haunting than the last. What was the true motive of this killer? This all began in 1997 with the death of Patrick McNeill, a Fordham University student found floating in the river in the east river of New York City. The police declared his death as an ‘undetermined drowning’ but Gannon believed that there was truly more to this case than what it had been settled upon. Later on Gannon retired and recruited his partner Duarte to help him with this investigation. In 2008, these men announced their findings to the public, releasing 40 potential  murders and now today there is over 300 cases in their database. The victims were typically college aged white men who disappeared after a night out with their friends and later that night were found dead in the local rivers. There are theories that this was a domestic terroist gang called the ‘smiley face killers’ due to the smiley faces located near the crime sences, that were murderers jealous of these men who organized a system across the entire nation to kill them. Investigators suggest that these people would drug the men, hold them captive for a little while and then finally dump their dead bodies in a local river.

What’s the evidence for this case? Dakota James went missing for 40 days, but he only showed decomposition for three days. Todd Geib went missing for 21 days but only showed decomposition for 2.5 days. There was also traces of GHB also known as a date-rape drug, in some toxiology reports. Also the points to the smiley face graffiti tags found in places, mainly on bridges that were the suspected place that the body was dumped. “The cases align with larger patterns we see datawise across the U.S., and not just college towns” (Nile Cappello). The detectives have found high levels of GHB, lividity, insect presentence, and decomposition rates. These are the main thoughts of why all of these cases are connected, also with the men all being white college students. The two most leading causes of deaths in males under the age of 44 is accidents and suicide. A fact sheet written by the CDC shows men aged 18-34 are most likely to binge drink this risks accidental injuries. Between the fall of 2006 and February 2010 police and foot reports in LA Crosse stopped at least 65 intoxicated people. This report went onto even more detail the cases of 20 near drowning victims who had survived. This is why some people are convinced that these cases are just accidental drownings.

Dangerous killers targeting young white men have grown worldwide momentum over the past decade. And to the people that believe these crimes are truly just accidental drownings of men after a long night out, the unwillingness to let go of evidence represents the physiological factors that impact our belief and relationship with true crime, ambiguity and evil. Not many jurisdictions have actually taken their work seriously, but Gannon says, “I have plenty of emails from officers and detectives who have told us we are onto something, and to keep going” (Nile Cappello). However, people say that these deaths are accidental drowning because humans hate the feeling of the unknown. They don’t like that to think that there could be somebody out there possibly planning for them to be their next victim. The underlying emotion to humans is fear and the need to control it. By reducing evil, they don’t need to understand it. This creates a false sense of security. It protects us and reduces the world from us and them and enables you to point the finger at somebody else to blame. They don’t like to think that if their loved one would’ve done something differently then they would have lived. The reality is that if the person wouldn't have gone out that night then they wouldn’t have died. These young men are not victims to young invincibility but of murder.

Whether you believe this was a serial killer case or not, the real lesson of these tragic events is that we as people need to be able to accept this feeling of the unknown. Us as people need to come together and stop creating all different sorts of false securities, blame and not accepting tragedies. If we distance ourselves from the truth we’re just making up fake realities instead of recognizing the facts of what may have actually happened.