TRUE CRIME: The police are calling them accidents. They say young men are simply drinking too much and meeting a tragic end in icy lakes and rivers. But the public thinks something else has been going on in America's northland since 1997. They're calling the sudden disappearances of hundreds of college-age men mysterious. They're calling the drownings murder.
THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN: A special true crime investigative report into the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory. Illustrated, with archival data.
"When I looked at these cases, the first thing that jumped out at me was the victimological profile. It's not a normal distribution...the standard deviation is only 0.4 on their weight and height." -- Dr. Lee Gilbertson, gang specialist and associate professor, Department of Criminal Justice Studies at St. Cloud University
"The statistics are so stacked against this number of men, young men, Caucasian males, found in bodies of water in that cluster of states, within that period of time." -- Dr. Cyril Wecht, forensic pathologist
"The probability is virtually zero that five intoxicated students just happened to walk similar or even different routes and end up on the riverbank." -- Dr. Maurice Godwin, criminal investigative psychologist, commenting on the La Crosse Wisconsin drowning cluster.
"They could have been murdered but the person was just so good at doing it that they didn't leave any physical evidence...[they] could sedate and drown him in a tub or something like that and then throw him in the river." -- John Kelly, psychotherapist and profiler
