The Case of the Drowning Men (17 page)

2008
extract
t
ranscripts.cnn.com

LARRY
KING
,
CNN
ANCHOR HOST
: Next, they're calling them the Smiley Faced murders now happening. But are they murders at all?
It's puzzling. We'll talk about it with police, a victim's family and crime experts, right after this.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK
> RETURN TO HOST
]

KING: Now this is puzzling
. T
he so-called Smiley Faced murders involve the deaths of dozens of men. But are they really homicides? The debate has torn families and law enforcement apart. Take a look.

[VIDEO + VOICEOVER]

KING
: Thirty five suspicious deaths in 33 cities, all men under the age of 30, found dead after a night of drinking with friends. Another link, this symbol, a smiley face painted near some of the bodies. The men were all eventually discovered in lakes or rivers. Coincidence? Or the work of serial killers?

KEVIN GANNON,
FORMER NYPD
SERGEANT: These young men are being abducted by individuals in the bars, taken out and, at some point, even held for a period of time before they are entered into the water.

KING: Retired Sergeant Kevin Gannon began his investigation in 1997, when the body of 20-year-old Patrick McNeil was found floating off a pier in Brooklyn. He was last seen with friends in a bar in Manhattan. Dozens of suspicious deaths have followed along with the haunting symbols
...

[CUT TO HOST
>
CONTINUE
VIDEO
VOICEOVER
]

KING:
Local officials ruled most of the deaths accidents. But Gannon and fellow retired detective Anthony Duarte say they have even more evidence tonight that proves these men didn't
drown, that they were murdered.

[
END VIDEO
]

KING: The aforementioned Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte join us. Kevin is the retired New York PD detective. He's been tracking suspicious drownings of scores of young men all over the country. He's in New York. So is Anthony Duarte, the retired New York PD detective. He's working with Gannon on what some are calling the Smiley Face murder
s
. And in Tampa is Dr. Cyril Wecht, forensic pathologist and attorney. He's examined autopsy reports from some of the cases that Gannon and Duarte are investigating.

Kevin, is the reason you think this is murder the smiley face nearby at all the deaths?

GANNON: That's not the only reason. Obviously, we did a lot more work than that. Besides the specificity of the group, that is so narrowly related to age, 19 to 23, highly intelligent, all very athletic young men. But besides that, we had to do all of the evidentiary work that would try to substantiate our claims that these are homicides and not just mere coincidences with a smiley face attached to it.

KING: Anthony, you have suggested these were perfect crimes. What was the typical cause of death listed on the death certificate?

ANTHONY DUARTE,
FORMER
NYPD
POLICE
DETECTIVE: Many times it was listed as either accidental or possible suicide. And in many cases, it was also listed as undetermined.

KING: What told you it was murder?

DUARTE: Well, we think in somewhere around
twelve
cases, we have enough evidence now that we can point it towards murder.

KING: Like?

DUARTE: Like in the Patrick McNeil case that we currently are here for, we have new evidence that we just got from the autopsy report and photos, showing that unfortunately Patrick was burned, and has a ligature on him. And this suggests to us that the medical examiner's office missed this, and this case should have been classified as a homicide.

KING: So Dr. Wecht, what they're saying is a serial killer is loose, kind of a brilliant serial killer, who can beat forensic experts. You have examined some autopsy reports. What do you make of this?

DR. CYRIL WECHT, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Larry, first of all, if I may say from a forensic, epidemiological standpoint, as you pointed out in your introduction, 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
…

From the forensic pathology standpoint, with regard to Pat
rick McNeil, we have a young man who is found
―
he has a blood alcohol level of 0.16. Probably a third of that is postmortem putrefaction, a quarter to a third of that. So we have a relatively low level of alcohol. There's no way in the world that this man t
hen accidentally is going to fall into a body of water, because he
h
as a 0.1 or a 0.12 level of alcohol.

Then he has fly larvae, that's the key thing, Larry. It brings in anthropology and entomology with pathology. Fly larvae are found in his groin. These are fly larvae that could not have been laid in th
at area of the body postmortem.

KING: In English, what are you saying?

WECHT: I'm saying that the fly larvae have been laid in the groin area. It's an indoor fly
―
could not have been an outdoor fly
―i
t was an indoor fly. And the larvae were there, did not move ahead into the later stage. So we have a body that was already dead before it was placed in the water.

KING: I got you. You're saying he was murdered?

WECHT:
I would call it a homicide, yes
.

[
CUT >
COMMERCIAL BREAK
> RETURN
& CUT
TO HOST
]

KING: So Kevin, what we're saying here, Kevin, is
―
you're saying that there's a serial killer out there right now?

GANNON: Well, this isn't just one individual.

KING: How do
you know?

GANNON: Because of the fact that we have a multiplicity of victims on same dates across the country. The fact that what I was trying to tell people before about the evidentiary
―
we went to find this evidence; we looked at the location of the body,
where it was recovered, in relationship to where it should have went in, the condition of the body when it was recovered. Did it match what a body should look like at that amount of time in the water.

The position of the body, was it face down or on its back, and if the circumstances about that lividity
―
when the blood settles in the body after death
―
it takes anywhere from eight to 12 hours. We can tell that it's not consistent with the way the person drowned. And then there's taxonomy. What we have is the evidence that leads away from where the victims w
ere going
…

KING: Anthony, that makes the puzzlement even greater. So we have possibly many people going around killing people, putting a smiley face. Are they copycats, Anthony? What's your read? What's your theory?

DUARTE: Well, as Kevin said earlier, it's definitely not just the smiley face. We have different clusters in different parts of the country that are tied in. Smiley face is probably the least part of it
…

KING: We reached out to the New York Police Department for an updated comment on Patrick McNeil's death and on the theories of former detectives Gannon and Duarte
a
nd we received no response
…

It’s a puzzlement.
We'll have more in 60 seconds.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK
> RETURN TO HOST
]

KING: Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte, former New York PD detectives stay with us. Joining us from San Francisco is Candice Delong, former profiler for the FBI. We asked the FBI to comment on all this and what they told us, in essence, was they have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths. And that the vast majority appear to be alcohol-related drownings. Candice, what's your read?

CANDICE DELONG, FORMER FBI PROFILER: Well, the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit looked extensively at this, in addition to using their violent criminal apprehension program, which is a computerized tracking system. And they don't see any links. I don't know if the two New York detectives have met with the profiling unit or not. And unfortunately, it's sad but true. Now
,
notwithstanding the Patrick McNeil case, sadly a lot of young people do die of accidental deaths, many times drowning, on our college campuses throughout the nation.

KING: Were you impressed with what Dr. Wecht had to say?

DELONG: Yes, regarding that particular case in New York, that certainly does sound like it was a homicide. I, however, fail to see the connection between the New York case and these other mid
-
western cases. Perhaps we could learn.

[CUT TO GANNON]

GANNON: We've looked at the work that the Behavioral Science Unit, the Behavioral Analysis Unit did in La Crosse, as well as the BCI
,
Bureau of Criminal Investigation from the state, along with the La Crosse detective bureau. When we looked at that work, in five of those cases, there was a lot of evidence that obviously was missed. In three of the cases, there's evidence leading away from where the police have
―
they all say they suspect the individuals came out of the bars, walked three blocks to the Mississippi River and floated in.

As my partner Anthony always says, if you don't want the answers, don't ask the question. And they brought these dogs in and the
dogs led to the river and that was it. But when the dogs led them somewhere else after that, they disregard
ed
the second part of the search, which to us is not doing a complete and open evaluation. And in two of the cases a living witness
―
we can prove that
that living witness was held for five hours before put in the water, as attempted murder. And Lou Coleman was dead before he went into the water, clearly.

KING: Anthony, this must boggle your mind then, feelings that you have that you feel are murders and
are not being taken seriously?

DUARTE: That's exactly right, Larry. You're born with certain instincts and gut feelings. And when you feel something that's not right, chances are it's really not right. And if you see something that's not right and you don't act upon it, in essence, you're actually sanctioning that type of action.

KING: How do you respond to that, Candice?

DELONG: Well, I agree that, certainly, instincts are important. I would simply like to point out that the FBI in cases like this, where they are consulted, any additional information that comes up will be taken into consideration and an additional assessment will be made. In this particular case, the FBI, they basically had three choices. Of course, now, I think we're looking at what, 25 t
o 30 deaths
, b
ut the choices would be
: Y
es, we agree that this is
―
these are murders of a serial nature. No, we totally disagree. Or this is inconclusive; we need more information
, w
e cannot say. And they have come out and said they don't see any evidence o
f a serial nature.

KING: At this point
―t
hanks, Candice. We'll come back and we'll talk to a gang specialist from a school where an alleged victim went missing. Stay with us.

[
COMMERCIAL BREAK
> RETURN TO HOST
]

KING: Gannon and Duarte remain in New York. Jo
ining us from Minneapolis is Dr. Lee Gilbertson. He's a gang specialist and associate professor, department of criminal justice studies at St. Cloud State Universities. He's been working with the detectives, examining possible linkages between the case. He got involved
.