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He's the most terrifying serial killer you've never heard of. Haddon Clark has confessed to several murders, but investigators say he could have over 100 victims. At the center of the mayhem, a cellmate of Haddon's that was able to get key evidence into Haddon's murder spree across America,
because hadn't thought he was Jesus Christ. Born Evil, The Serial Killer and the Savior, an ID true crime event. Premieres Monday, September 2nd at 9. Watch on ID or stream on Max. Set your DVR. Chicago, Illinois.
A city known by many names: Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, Chicagoland. A city of culture and commerce, known for its revolutionary architecture, legendary sports franchises, comedy clubs, art institutes and museums, and excellent cuisine, including its own style of pizza.
Sitting on the shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago's first non-indigenous resident was Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a free black man from Haiti who brought his Native American wife to the area to seek a living, trading with the indigenous people and the European hunters, furriers, and explorers that were pouring into the area.
Pointe du Sable built a home for himself and his wife on the mouth of the Chicago River, setting the stage for what would become one of the world's most vibrant cities. Eventually, Chicago would be known as the meatpacking capital of the world. At its peak, Chicago was butchering and processing 80% of the United States' meat supply, a feat made infamous by the author Upton Sinclair in his 1906 novel, "The Jungle."
For the first time in history, the raw and horrifying realities of where people's meat came from were brought into public consciousness. From the poverty of the workers to the complete lack of sanitation, the jungle exposed truths that most citizens would have been happy to stay ignorant of. Of course, the spilled blood of cattle and pigs is not the only bloodshed Chicago is known for.
Gangland USA is yet another nickname given to Chicago for its historic mob wars during the era of Prohibition. From petty thieves to entrepreneurial bootleggers to branches of the Sicilian Mafia, crime and corruption ran Chicago for decades, leading to countless murders and seemingly endless violence.
Even as late as 2013, Chicago was still being defined by death when Chuck Gowdy, a reporter at ABC7 Chicago, coined the nickname "Sharrock", a combination of Chicago and Iraq, in order to compare the fact that between 2003 and 2012, over 4,000 people were killed in Chicago. He then compared that statistic to the surprisingly equal number of soldiers killed in the Iraq War during the same period.
Of course, despite its bloody history, Chicago is also recognized for its music scene, even having an entire subsection of a music genre named after it: Chicago blues. From masters like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, bluesmen moved to and were born in Chicago, giving the world one of the richest catalogs of American music ever. To this day, a thriving music scene is an integral part of Chicago's culture and nightlife.
Unfortunately, it would be the convergence of Chicago's music scene and its history of violence that would set off a debate that still rages today. At approximately 9:45 on the morning of June 17th, 2023, the body of Noah Enos was found in the Chicago River.
He had been missing for five days and had last been seen by friends at a concert at the Salt Shed, a local music venue. While incredibly tragic, what made the discovery of Noah's body significant was the fact that his was the 16th body pulled from the Chicago River since 2022. 16 bodies in only a year and a half.
As Nicole Weiss, Noah's girlfriend, put it: "I know that Noah wasn't the first one to go missing and be found in the river, and I sure as shit hope that he's the last." Unfortunately, Nicole's wish did not come true, spurring on a theory that maybe accidental tragedy wasn't to blame, but, perhaps, forces of a more sinister nature were at work. Part 1: An Artery Opened
Despite many people's beliefs, including even Chicago citizens, the Chicago River is not a man-made marvel, not completely. The river itself is ancient and has been used for centuries by indigenous tribes, European explorers, and titans of industry as a means of travel and a throughway of commerce. But with all this activity came pollution and corruption of the waters of Lake Michigan,
The main source of clean drinking water for thousands upon thousands of Chicago residents. And the endpoint of the Chicago River.
In 1900, one of the most ambitious civil engineering undertakings in the 20th century looked to remedy the pollution by reversing the flow of the Chicago River, sending the raw sewage, garbage, and industrial chemicals that had flowed out into the lake into the newly built Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal which, in turn, flowed into the Illinois River, then the Mississippi River, and on into the Gulf of Mexico.
Despite the feat of engineering, the Sanitary District of Chicago, later named the Metropolitan Water Replacement District of Greater Chicago, struggled with keeping the river itself clean. While the quality of drinking water in Lake Michigan improved, the quality of the Chicago River continued to suffer. It wasn't until the establishment of the United States Clean Water Act in 1972 that things for the waterway turned around.
It was hoped that the 1972 act would prevent the direct discharge of pollutants such as sewage, garbage, and chemicals into the country's waterways, including the Chicago River. It wouldn't be until decades later that the United States Environmental Protection Agency finally approved the Chicago River for general and recreational usage.
Thirty years after the US Clean Water Act, and over a century after the engineered reversal of the waterway, the Chicago River was finally fit for humans to enjoy in 2012. However, with that newfound enjoyment, a history of tragedy and fear still lingered in and around the walkways and banks of the mighty waterway.
While the Chicago River may be known for turning green on St. Patrick's Day, the waters themselves had a long history of being blood red. In 1849, on March 12th, the Chicago River would be the epicenter of one of the most disastrous floods in Illinois history.
After days and days of heavy rain, coupled with the swift melting of the ice flow, the banks of the Chicago River were overcome by floodwaters that rose several feet into the air, lifting huge chunks of ice above the city's seawalls. With the combination of raging floodwaters and the violent impacts of the huge pieces of ice, nearly every bridge perched over the Chicago River was demolished and washed away in a matter of hours.
The noise of the destruction was likened to artillery fire. Hundreds of vessels were destroyed or carried out into Lake Michigan, causing what would be equal to millions of dollars in damage today. Even worse than the economic impact were the lives lost. Although only a handful of deaths were officially reported, hundreds of sailors and dock workers went missing that day, never to be heard from again.
Unfortunately, due to the transitory nature of their professions and the lack of accurate record-keeping at the time, authorities did not add the missing to the possible death toll. Just over half a century later, in 1915, the waterway would be host to Chicago's most deadly disaster, where over 800 people would lose their lives while being only less than two dozen feet from the shore.
The SS Eastland had been known as a troubled ship with a less than stellar safety record. The ship had been remodeled several times in the years preceding the disaster, including a concrete deck being added above the waterline in order to accommodate more and more passengers as Chicago's population grew and residents needed options for traversing the waterway and Lake Michigan.
Ironically, it was the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 that led to the ship's imminent disaster. For the sake of safety, several additional lifeboats had been added to the Eastland, but instead of increasing the chances of survival for its passengers, the ship became even more top-heavy, dooming those present on the morning of July 24th, 1915.
That morning, 2,500 employees of the Western Electric Corporation boarded the SS Eastland for a trip down the river and across Lake Michigan to Michigan City, Indiana, where a company picnic was planned. Instead of taking them to a day of fun with their families and coworkers, the ship rolled over before it left the docks of the Chicago River.
Passengers were flung into the water while others tried to jump to the dock before the ship fully capsized. Many drowned in spite of their efforts. The survivors desperately clung to boxes and other bits of debris from the accident as they awaited rescue. But for the ones trapped below decks, rescue would not come. Despite rescuers cutting several holes in the ship's now-exposed hull, it was too late for hundreds of passengers.
The official death toll would be 844 people. Among that number were 22 full families that had been entirely wiped out. Even if you set aside the many tragedies that have befallen the river over the centuries, industry itself has committed its own atrocities on the waterway.
For over 150 years, the south bend of the Chicago River has been known as Bubbly Creek due to the historic Union Stockyards' disposal of immense amounts of animal blood, waste, and animal organs directly into the river, creating nothing short of an environmental disaster.
The quantity of waste being dumped by the slaughterhouses was so bad that there is even a 1911 picture showing a man and, comically, a chicken, standing on the surface of the river unaided by ropes or planks. They were being held aloft by the scum of the river, solidifying into a layer made up of animal parts discarded by the meatpackers. Even with the passing of the 1972 US Clean Water Act and decades of effort to clean the river,
That part of the river still bubbles like a hot tub as long buried organic waste continues to decompose. But it's not the long dead bodies of pigs and cattle that worry Chicago residents today. No, it is something much more sinister.
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to start saving and investing for your future today. Paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC Registered Investment Advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash crime mob. Part three, bodies, bodies, bodies. On March 29th, 2022, 49-year-old Kathleen Martin went missing from her home in Albany Park, a neighborhood of Chicago.
On March 31st, three days after her relatives reported her missing, Kathleen's body was found in the Bunker Hill area of Caldwell Woods in Cook County. Neither the authorities nor her relatives were clear on how Kathleen made her way to the river, but the body had been there for some time. There were no indications of trauma found on her body, and the case was considered a drowning.
However, even to this day, the exact circumstances of her death are still considered undetermined. And while Kathleen's death was far from the first to be discovered in or near the Chicago River, the woman's unfortunate passing would be the catalyst for what would become a firestorm of a mystery filled with theories and conjecture.
While Kathleen went missing and was found in March of 2022, April of the same year would mark a dramatic increase in the Chicago River's body count. On April 12th, another body was found near Caldwell Woods. This time, it was the body of an unidentified man that may or may not have been related to a missing persons case in Illinois.
The man's body was found in the north branch of the waterway and was handed over to the Illinois State Police for investigation. On April 23rd, the body of an unidentified woman was found by the North Riverside Plaza. The woman's name and cause of death have yet to be determined. On the same day, an unidentified man's body was recovered close to Lake Michigan's 31st Street Harbor.
But the day's finds were not over yet. 80-year-old Yuet Tseng's body was pulled from the river's south branch. The Marine Unit of the Chicago PD found her unresponsive, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Although drowning was determined as the cause of death, it was unclear how she ended up in the water. That was three bodies pulled from the river in one single day. May of 2022 would prove to be no better than April.
31-year-old Eden De La O was reported missing to Chicago police after having last been seen in McKinley Park on April 3rd. Surveillance footage would later show his movements on May 1st, the same day his body was recovered from the Chicago River near 41st Street and Central. Details of his death have not been released by Chicago PD, and the circumstances are still under investigation.
April 30th was the last day 22-year-old Natalie Brookson was seen alive. She was last seen leaving work in the Budlong Woods neighborhood. But three days later, on May 2nd, her body was found near the Bryn Mawr Avenue section of Lake Michigan. The cause and manner of her death are still pending after the autopsy results came back inconclusive. Natalie's circumstances would be mysterious on their own.
But the fact that her boyfriend, Daniel Sotelo, 26, was found dead on May 22nd, about a mile offshore, only adds to the uncertainty surrounding both Natalie's and Daniel's deaths. Daniel had last been seen in April, and his death was determined to be a drowning, but police have yet to release details of the investigation. In June of 2022, a person in distress was reported to authorities.
At around 9:30 on the night of June 21st, Heywood Brown, 31, was recovered from the Chicago River. He was later pronounced dead and his death was determined to be an accidental drowning. On December 3rd, Krzysztof Zuber, a 21-year-old Polish man, was reported missing.
His body was discovered on December 7th and police determined from surveillance video that he had fallen into Lake Michigan around Oak Shore Beach near Lakeshore Drive. His death was determined an accidental drowning with ethanol intoxication a contributing factor. Later that same month, 25-year-old Peter Salvino disappeared after splitting up from a group of friends.
That was December 17th, and three days later, on the 20th, Peter's body would be recovered from Diversity Harbor. As with Zubert, Salvino's death was determined to drowning with ethanol intoxication as a major factor. It goes without saying that alcohol and water are a dangerous mix and can quickly lead to tragedy. But some began to wonder if the similar circumstances of Salvino and Zubert's deaths may have been more than a coincidence.
And as the new year came along, those coincidences became harder and harder to believe, especially when 2023 did its best to keep up with 2022's body count. Joel Orduno, 23, was found on March 17th in the Chicago River. The investigation into his death was closed and was determined non-criminal.
Still wearing his FedEx uniform, Richard Garcia, 46, was found dead in the Chicago River on April 13th. The cause and manner of Garcia's death is still pending. After being kicked out of a Chicago club on March 18th for being too drunk, U.S. Navy Seaman Seamus Gray's body was pulled from Lake Michigan a month later on April 19th. The cause of his death was determined to be drowning.
but the manner was inconclusive. On May 8th, an unidentified woman's body was recovered from the Chicago River. Details surrounding her death were not immediately released by police. Then on June 12th of 2023, the death that would spark speculation of a possible serial killer in the area shocked Chicago. Noah Enos, 26, went missing after leaving the Salt Shed, a local music venue with a coworker.
He was reported missing after the two became separated and Noah's phone apparently died. He was found later after his body was discovered in the Chicago River. Noah's family hired a private investigator and called for justice. Believing his death was not an accident and he had been killed intentionally, the public was starting to agree with them.
With the inclusion of two deaths that were determined suicides, the death toll had hit 16 bodies within 18 months, prompting former FBI and CIA agent Tracy Walder to state, "There are so many similar patterns right across the board that it's not just a coincidence anymore." And former agent Walder was not the only one to think so. Many believed that something nefarious was at work.
and a few even postulated that they knew who the person or persons could be. Enter the smiley face killer. Part four, TikTok. Who's there? The smiley face killer. The rise in popularity of true crime stories has given birth to a new type of detective, citizen sleuths or online sleuths, depending on who you ask.
while amateur investigators date back to the 19th century, including famed writer of suspense and macabre fiction, Edgar Allan Poe. The citizen sleuth has only truly risen to prominence in the internet age. Thousands of people across the United States and the world spend hundreds of hours of their personal time trying to crack cold cases and chase down leads in investigations that have stymied authorities.
While many pursue it as a simple hobby, for others, it's a calling and they treat it as such. Which brings us to Ken Wax, a marketing executive and TikTok creator with over 1 million followers. A Chicago resident, Wax started posting theories about the bodies found in and near the Chicago River to his TikTok account in early March of 2023.
Wax postulated that someone was going after men who were leaving bars and nightclubs late at night, luring them somewhere, killing them, and then dumping their bodies in the waterway. But despite living in Chicago, Wax wasn't limiting his scope to the Windy City. No, Wax was claiming that the deaths were part of a much bigger picture.
A picture that's stretched all across the country and may include more than one person. It all began on March 9th, 2023, when Wax posted to TikTok about two encounters he'd experienced in the past six weeks. He stated that a car had pulled up, the window rolled down, and a person inside asked if he needed a ride. Each time he declined, the car sped off in a suspicious manner.
Encouraged by the comments on his video, Wax then speculated that the unsolicited car rides were connected to the Chicago River deaths. Wax further surmised that the Chicago River deaths were the act of a serial killer. "I know how they're going missing. I know how they're all connected," Wax said in a video post. "I know why the cops and the media are not doing anything or covering it up, and I know what we can do about it." But Wax didn't stop there.
The young marketing professional began charting the deaths. Then he expanded the charts to include other deaths in areas close by. Soon Wax was making maps and pointing out to his viewers that similar murders were happening all across the country. "I quickly learned that this was happening to many others in the Chicago area and beyond," he said.
What Wax said he discovered was that young men and women would go missing after leaving a party or bar or nightclub, and their bodies would later be recovered from local waterways.
Then Wax took the next step beyond reporting the results of his personal investigation and actually named who he thought was perpetrating the crimes. A collective of serial killers that had banded together and were known as the Smiley Face Killer. And they had been at work for decades. The Smiley Face Killer was not a new discovery by Wax.
The theory of an organized group of serial killers was first advanced in 1997 by two former NYPD detectives, Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte. The two would soon be joined by St. Cloud State University criminal justice professor and gang expert, Lee Gilbertson.
Gannon described to reporters that the smiley face moniker came from graffiti evidence found close to each body that depicted a smiley face, usually a line for each eye and a simple curve for the smile. But Gannon also said more than a dozen other symbols were found, giving even more credence to the connections between the suspicious deaths.
However, despite their claims, most authorities discounted the findings of Gannon, Duarte, and Gilbertson as pure coincidence. Without official interest, the smiley face killer theory fell into obscurity. However, 25 years after putting their theory out there, Gannon's world would collide with Wax's world.
After several of his posts going viral, Wax stated he was approached in late April 2023 by private investigator Jordan Scherer to be part of an investigative team that included Gannon. Empowered by his new allies, Wax's videos started making more and more claims and suppositions. He especially latched onto the volume of undetermined and unknown labels attached to so many of the deaths.
With what was considered legitimacy now behind him, Wax's follower numbers on TikTok skyrocketed, and the theory of the smiley face killer was once again thrust into the public spotlight.
Taking to TikTok regularly, Wax's theory became a sensation and was picked up by several news outlets across the country, including more than a couple of prominent broadcasters and publications such as Newsweek, The New York Post, the UK's Daily Mail, and Rolling Stone magazine. However,
Wax's newfound importance and fame would soon turn on him after many other online sleuths realized he was mentioning his employer, a tech startup named Foresight, in many of his videos. Suspicious that he was using his platform not as a way to seek justice for the victims, but as a way to promote this new startup, he was a marketer after all. The citizen sleuth community slowly began to take everything Wax said with a grain of salt.
Many accused him of taking advantage of tragedy to further his career. Others said that his unsubstantiated claims ended up hurting the content creator community as a whole. Soon Wax was embroiled in a controversy of his own making. The controversy would culminate in Wax posting a video to TikTok on May 4th.
In the video, Wax said: Wax also apologized to the families of the victims, some of whom had tried contacting him, yet said their emails were not responded to.
One victim's family member even paid $30 for a Zoom meeting with Wax to discuss their case, and Wax never showed. He later apologized and said the mix-up was due to an outdated calendar he was using. His apology was discounted quickly since the company he worked for was specifically creating a social calendar app. It was hard to believe the chief marketing officer of a calendar startup would miss such an important appointment.
Feeling chastened, Wax put out an email statement about his involvement in the investigation. "As it relates to the case, I've been in contact with the Chicago Police Department about my discoveries throughout this process," he said. "And I'm working closely with a team of private investigators to hand over all the data and work I've done over the past two months, so they can use their time and resources to give this case the attention it deserves."
Wax's TikTok views per video soon dropped from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands to just a few thousand views. Wax pivoted from true crime and back to marketing videos. His latest videos have covered subjects such as inflation, commerce, AI, and the 2024 election cycle. Just because one proponent of the smiley face killer theory has fallen from grace does not mean Chicago is safe. Far from it.
As Chicago's own history has shown, there's quite a rogues gallery of serial killers that have terrorized the city and the Midwest over the centuries. And if there have been so many in the past, it speaks to reason that another is ready to rear its ugly head soon.
They say that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. But for Chicago residents, ignoring the grisly history of murder and death that has surrounded what was once called the White City is no easy task. Part five, you know who else smiles? Clowns. The nickname, the White City, came to prominence when Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, also known as the Chicago World's Fair.
Held on the grounds of Jackson Park, many of the buildings erected for the World's Fair were draped in material colored white, giving rise to the nickname "The White City." But there was more than innovation happening during this time. Within the city was a man named Herbert Webster Mudgett, who would become known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, which would later be shortened to H.H. Holmes as his infamy grew. What was H.H. Holmes infamous for exactly?
According to him, he murdered over 27 people. After a series of cons, Holmes took over a pharmacy and soon began to remodel the structure into what has been dubbed "Chicago's Murder House." Secret passages, trap doors, and an incinerator were only some of the horrific features of Holmes' abode.
Despite his confession, Holmes was only convicted of the murder of Benjamin Pittazel, his accomplice in several of his other cons before he settled in Chicago. Holmes was hanged for that murder in May of 1896. Yet, Holmes was far from the only serial killer to take up residence in Chicago. Between 1993 and 1999, 11 women were raped, murdered, and their bodies defiled by a man named Andre Crawford.
Crawford preyed on addicts and sex workers mostly. So unfortunately, his crimes went unnoticed for years due to his victims being on the fringes of society. The FBI has long held the position that serial killers rarely stray from their own race when they kill. Being a black man, Crawford followed that pattern of serial killers and chose victims that matched his own ethnicity, further pushing the deaths to the bottom of the authorities' priority list.
A DNA test linked him to seven of his victims, and Crawford was arrested in January of 2000. It would take nearly 10 years for Crawford to be convicted. He'd already spent 9 years and 10 months in the Cook County Jail before he was sentenced to life without parole by a jury on December 10th, 2009. He would die in prison from liver cancer only 8 years later.
In the early 1980s, the suburbs of Chicago were terrorized by serial killer and convicted rapist Brian James Dugan. From 1983 to 1985, Dugan stalked the streets of suburban western Chicago, where it was estimated he had captured and raped close to a dozen women.
In July of 1985, Dugan chased 27-year-old Donna Schnoor's car down and ran her off the road, where he pulled her free, beat and raped her, then drowned her in a nearby quarry. Murder by drowning was a signature of his, and in June of 1985, Dugan captured 8-year-old Melissa Ackerman and her friend Opal Horton. Dugan threw Horton into his car and then tried to subdue Ackerman,
While he overpowered Ackerman, Horton was able to escape. Unfortunately, Ackerman did not escape, and Dugan murdered her by drowning her in a creek 15 miles from the abduction location. Her body wouldn't be discovered for weeks. While under arrest for the rape of several women and girls, and the murders of Schnorr and Ackerman, Dugan informally confessed to the abduction and murder of 10-year-old Janine Nicorico.
Surprisingly, three men had already been arrested for that crime, two of whom would be convicted in 1987. It wouldn't be until 1995 that the two men were acquitted and released. Another 10 years would go by before DNA evidence proved Dugan was the killer of Nicorico. He pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to death. But the death penalty was abolished following the passage of a law in 2011.
Dugan is currently serving life in prison for the murders of Schnorr and Ackerman, as well as Nicorico. However, there is a catch to Dugan's story. Dugan claimed that in 1972, he was offered a job by a man at a grocery store. He got in the man's car and was taken to a secluded location where he was sexually assaulted, given $20, and then returned to the same grocery store from where he was picked up.
Dugan made this claim when seeing the same man on TV in 1978 after the man's arrest for the rape, torture, and murder of 33 young men. Investigators said that Dugan's claim did not match the man's patterns, nor was that particular grocery store part of the man's hunting grounds. Whatever the truth is, it's an interesting footnote in the history of one of America's most notorious serial killers, a man who had a smile to rival the smiley face killers.
After all, the man was called "The Killer Clown," but his real name was John Wayne Gacy. Gacy's killing grounds would take place in a house of horrors located in Norwood Park Township, just outside Chicago. Gacy would lure his victims to his house using various reasons, then lock the young men in handcuffs under the guise of showing them a magic trick. Unfortunately for the young men, the trick was that they would never get out of those handcuffs alive.
Gacy would torture, rape, and kill his victims, usually by asphyxiation or strangulation. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawlspace of his house, with the other bodies dispersed on his property or disposed of in the Des Plaines River, adding another river to the list of waterways in and around Chicago that would end up being the watery graves for far too many victims.
It is no surprise that the idea of a serial killer being active in Chicago became an easily believable explanation for the 16 bodies found in the Chicago River from 2022 to 2023. But plausible explanations are not proof and the Chicago police were not interested in online sleuths or TikTok theories about the found bodies. Part six, don't worry, the police are on the case, maybe.
With Chicago's long history of blood and violence, the Chicago Police Department was no stranger to murder cases becoming sensational stories. They had handled gang wars, multiple serial killers, and everyday criminals were routine. So when amateurs began to take over the narrative of the bodies found in the Chicago River, authorities were, to put it mildly, not pleased.
In March of 2023, city and county officials put out a statement in response to concerned social media posts, stating that there was no evidence that any of the 16 deaths were related. Of course, with the internet being what it is, there was instant and considerable skepticism. So the Chicago PD stepped in with their own statement.
At this time, there is no evidence suggesting there is a connection between these drowning deaths," a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department told Chicago's NBC5 in March of 2023. "The Chicago Police Department conducts thorough death investigations as we work to bring a measure of closure to the families of these and all victims."
but people believe what they want to believe. And the Chicago PD's efforts to put the idea of a serial killer to rest was not going to be an easy one. "All roads lead to a potential serial killer on the loose," Tracy Walder told NewsNation Now, stating that it likely isn't a coincidence at all. "They are all around the same age. Also, they are all the same gender. They are all male. At least, the last I checked, they were all male."
So that to me, coupled with the obviously same location, and I would suspect the manner of death, which is most likely drowning in all of them, I don't think that is by accident.
Yet officials continued to counter Walder's and others' statements and theories, stating that they believed the deaths were accidents, or at the very least, undetermined. "When a drowning is unwitnessed and evidence of accident, suicide, or homicide is not present, the manner of death is ruled undetermined," the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office told Newsweek in a February 2023 statement.
If new evidence is presented, the office will review it and determine whether the initial ruling should be amended. The Chicago PD, for their part, would not budge from their previous statements and kept the stance that they could not comment on or theorize on current investigations. Yet the denials, or lack of denials, have only spurred on more interest in the mysteries surrounding the deaths.
When asked by Newsweek in May of 2023 about the situation in Chicago and its relation to the Smiley Face Killer, former NYPD detective Kevin Gannon stated, "The reason the Smiley Face Killer has persisted for so long is the enormous amount of young men and women, specifically men, who over the past 26 years have gone missing from bars, suspiciously separated from their friends, only to wind up deceased in a body of water."
What makes this even more suspicious is the fact that most of these deaths occur during the fall and winter months, when it is very rare and unlikely for them to be near the water. If these were truly alcohol-related deaths, then why aren't more of them in the summertime, when young people are near bodies of water and drinking?
But despite outside input from online and citizen sleuths, and armchair quarterbacking by ex-detectives and FBI agents, the Chicago PD stuck to their guns. To them, the deaths were not related, but were simply cases of bad timing, and the fact that one TikTok creator decided to throw out his own unsubstantiated theory, and the world, including the press, grabbed onto that theory with both hands.
The Chicago PD's position can easily be summed up by Joseph Giacalone, a former New York City police officer turned professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who was interviewed by the New York Post in June of 2023 regarding his skepticism of there being a serial killer involved. Social media seems to fuel a lot of these conspiracy theories, but the investigators have to tune all that out and just do what they're supposed to do.
Jackalone told the Post. Part 7: Is it safe? While the majority of deaths occurred during 2022 and 2023, that doesn't mean they were the only deaths. In July of 2021, the body of an 18-year-old woman was found in the Chicago River. In October 2021, the body of a 32-year-old man was found in the river as well.
But one of the more damning discoveries that falls within the theory of the smiley face killer is the death of 23-year-old Enaki Baskaran, a University of Illinois graduate. On October 30th, 2019, Baskaran was out with friends at a bar in Chicago when he left for an undisclosed reason. When he attempted to return to the bar, he was not let in and his friends last heard from him at 11:30 pm that night.
His body would be recovered from the Chicago River at 4:53 p.m. on Friday, November 6th. Baskerin's death fits the smiley face killer M.O. A young man leaves a bar at night and is never heard from again until his body is found in the local waterway. There is coincidence and then there is pattern. The trouble, as always, is determining between the two.
Just like the deaths didn't start in 2022, the deaths also did not stop in 2023. On Tuesday, January 30th, 2024, a body was recovered from the Chicago River on the Lower West Side and was identified as Chicago resident 34-year-old Michael McCord.
The strange part of McCord's death was he had been reported missing since October 23rd, 2023, and detectives were unclear on how long the man's body had been in the river. But his age, gender, and mysterious disappearance, which happened to be in 2023, only added fuel to the fire behind the serial killer theory. Online sleuths to this day continue to try to connect the deaths to the smiley face killer.
Regardless of the sensationalism that would come to surround the tragedies of more than 16 bodies found in the Chicago River, the reality is that serial killers walk among us. They are out there, watching, waiting, and actively seeking their next victim. Waterways or not, bodies are discovered every single day that are connected to some sick individual's crimes.
It is estimated by the FBI that 20 to 25 serial killers are active at any given time within the US, whether authorities are aware of them or not. This is a sobering statistic and one for all to be cognizant of. Whether the bodies found in the Chicago River are related by a single killer, a group of coordinated killers, or simply accidents is something that may never be known.
What is known is that there are dangers everywhere, and it is best for folks to be aware of their surroundings and stay alert when leaving public areas, lest they want to end up being the next body found floating in the Chicago River.
