"Serial Killer Gang" Has Now Drowned 40 in the US

[vonVeezelsnider]

By MURRAY WEISS and ANDY GELLER

April 29, 2008 -- Two ex-NYPD detectives doggedly probing the drowning of two New Yorkers believe they were murdered by a nationwide gang of psychopathic serial killers who have drowned 39 other young men.

Retired Detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte say Patrick McNeill, 20, a Fordham accounting major, was killed by what they are calling the Smiley Face Gang, which they say has struck in 25 cities in 11 states since 1997.

Smiley faces - some with horns - were drawn on walls at 22 of the crime scenes in five states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa. The paint, size and shape of the faces varied.

There were other unspecified symbols at some other crimes sites, but none at all in New York.

The victims in all the cases shared roughly the same profile: young men of college age who disappeared after a night of drinking, and drowned.

McNeill, who lived in Port Chester, disappeared Feb. 16, 1997, after drinking at a bar on East 92nd Street. His body was found April 7, 1997, near the 69th Street pier in Brooklyn.

Gannon, then working in missing persons, caught the case and promised McNeill's parents he would never give up.

When he retired, he enlisted Duarte, his old partner, and devoted his life to keeping that promise, mortgaging his house and spending tens of thousands of his own money.

He told The Post yesterday, "They're psychopaths. They have no remorse. Some of the victims were held for a while until they were put in the water."

Gannon said McNeill's death was similar to that of Lawrence Andrews, 22, who vanished on New Year's Eve in 2006 after drinking near Grand Central Terminal.

His body was found Feb. 12, 2007, also off the 69th Street pier.

Gannon said that after studying the water flow and land contour, he concluded the similarities weren't coincidental.

In both cases, he believes the victims were drugged with GHB, a date-rape drug, and then placed in the water.

Gannon and Duarte began working in high gear in 2003, when they learned four young men had vanished in Minnesota and Wisconsin over a 40-day period. Instead of looking at where the bodies were found, the detectives looked at the point of entry into the water, finding smiley faces nearby. Nine of the 22 faces were drawn with horns, Gannon said - like an "evil, happy, smiley man."

"To revisit the situation . . .is painful," said Andrews' mother, Susan.

I was watching this on the news and they mentioned a few towns where the gang had been active in drowning college students:

LaCrosse, WI

Dubuque, IA

St. Cloud, MN

Minneapolis, MN

New York City

Metro Detroit, MI

Tampa, FL

Canton, NY

I didn't catch the rest...

It's really disturbing to say the least. The RCMP and City Police in Edmonton and Calgary are going over their case files, it may be that there were a few done here in Calgary *cringes*. At the very least, I know I'm safe from these thugs. I'm a teetotaler for life and would never fit the profile of someone they'd go after, but still... Jeez, I get a pit in my stomach thinking about it. Next year I'm a university freshman and this sort of thing always runs around in the back of my mind.

[Robert Hall]

Interesting..there was a dissapearance and death in Breckenridge, Co last winter that was a similar MO....young guy from the East Coast was last seen staggering drunken out of a bar, was found in the snow a few months later.

[daves87rs]

That is scary...

[Blake Noble]

This is very disturbing.

[mustang84]

Holy crap!

In April 2007 a guy drowned in Lake Laverne here at ISU at between 4 and 6 AM on a Sunday morning. He had been out drinking heavily that night and was last seen around Campustown by a jogger. For three days nobody could find him until they started searching the lake and found him submerged at the bottom. The whole thing has been a mystery; police assumed he got drunk and fell into the lake, but the lake really isn't that deep until you get toward the middle and the place where he was found had railing, so he would have had to climb over the railing. It just doesn't add up.

However, after reading this story, maybe there is more to it...

Edited April 30, 2008 by mustang84

[FUTURE_OF_GM]

Same thing happened here...

A college aged guy (Not sure which of the schools he was from) was drinking one night up town and disappeared. As far as I know, his body was never found though.

These people are cowards.

Stuff like this is why I seldom, if ever, get drunk in public. I don't trust "people" at all. I'm just waiting for the day someone like this tries to harm me, I'll make them regret that they were ever born.

Edited April 30, 2008 by FUTURE_OF_GM

[capriceman]

i want to see these disturbing f'ed up people try that to me, because i would wreck there $h!.

These kinda of people make me sick. makes me want to suit up and do some underground $h! and end this madness. I mean theres no reason people should die like this. I beg these people to go after me because I have really nothing left to live for so I would risk it all to save other innocent civilians.

this really gets me going.