Welcome back to the Pathwind, Chile for part two of our series about the
unexplained death of Chris Jenkins. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up
on what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this is a
Halloween mystery and involves a twenty one year old student named Chris Jenkins who was
attending the University of Minnesota at that time. On Halloween in two thousand and
two, he decided to go out to a bar to celebrate with his girlfriend,
Ashley Rice, and he was dressed in a Native American costume, but
because it didn't have any pockets, he had to leave his cell phone,
his keys, and his wallet with Ashley, who put them inside her purse.
And the circumstances are murky, but Chris wound up being kicked out of
the bar that night, and he because he was separated from his friends and
Ashley had all his items, he couldn't contact them and let them know what
happened, and they would not let him back into the bar, so he
presumably had no ride home and was trying to make his way back. It
would later turn out that there was an off duty police officer named Mike Casey
at the bar who was supposedly trying to hit on Ashley. So it's been
rumored that he arranged for the bouncers to throw Chris out in order to get
him out of the picture so that he would have Ashley for himself. But
unfortunately, Chris never returned home and he was missing for four months, and
the Minneapolis PD did not want to perform an investigation because they knew it looked
bad for Officer Casey because he acted very negligent. And then finally on February
of two thousand and three, and they found Chris's body underneath the nearby bridge
in the Mississippi River. But there were there's a lot of evidence to indicate
that it did not look like he had been in the river for the entire
four months, but there were no noticeable signs of foul play, so they
were inclined to rule his death in accident. But four years later, they
appointed a new police chief who did a new investigation and pretty much ruled that,
hey, the evidence is pointing to foul play here, so he officially
reclassified Chris's death as a homicide and issued a public apology to the Jenkins family.
But even though the investigation was reopened, they've been unable to fight any
conclusive evidence of what happened. There's a guy in prison now named Jeremy Alford
who has committed another murder who has possibly been linked to this case, but
they've never been able to fight any conclusive evidence to incriminate him. And unfortunately,
after all these years, the investigation is pretty much out a standstill where
the police chiefs who overturned the homicide ruling is now saying that he's now only
fifty percent certain that it was a homicide. And there really isn't any one
theory about foul play or accidental which makes one hundred percent complete sense. So
this remains a huge head scratcher. So I suppose it's now time to address
a major elephant in the room in regards to this case. So let's talk
about the smiley faced murder theory, which has been heavily discussed in true crime
circles these past two decades. In case you're not familiar with it, this
theory was originally dreamed up by two retired New York City detectives, Kevin Gannon
and Anthony Duarte. They started to notice a disturbing pattern in the deaths of
a number of young men who were found in bodies of water throughout New York
and the midwestern United States during the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands.
The two detectives looked into at least forty five of these deaths, which involved
college staged males who would go out to a borrow or party, get intoxicated
before they left, and would eventually turn up dead in a body of water.
Even though the majority of these deaths would be classified as accidental drownings,
Gannon and Duarte believed these young men may have been the victim of a serial
killer or group of killers. The cases would be linked together because of graffiti
of a smiley face that was apparently discovered in close proximity to where a number
of these victims' bodies were found. This is how the Smiley Face murder theory
was launched, and the alleged perpetrator or perpetrators have been classified as the Smiley
Face Killer or the Smiley Face Gang. Now, since Chris Jenkins was a
college aged male who was found dead in a body of water under suspicious circumstances
after drinking at a bar, you will often see his name featured on lists
of potential Smiley Faced victims at the time Chris disappeared. He was one of
four separate college students from Minnesota and Wisconsin who went missing during an eleven day
period after leaving a bar or party. One of these students was actually a
female named Erica Dlquist, but her remains were found and her killer was eventually
charged with her murder. The other two students were males, one of them
Michael Knowle, who was found in a lake in a probable accidental drowning,
while the other, Joshua Giemond, has still never been found. In fact,
Joshua Geemon's case was actually featured on the Unsolved Mysteries Netflix reboot last year,
and the episode even made a brief mention of Chris's case. Of course,
the Jenkins family expressed frustration that law enforcement devoted all their resources attempting to
search for those other three missing students, while the Minneapolis p D did nothing
to find Chris. Now, it's never been officially confirmed that any Smiley faced
graffiti was found in relation to Chris's case. During an interview, jan Jenkins
once said that when she asked police if they ever found Smiley faces, they
never actually gave confirmation about this. She felt that their reaction seemed to indicate
that the answer was yes, But that is purely her interpretation. So it's
not the police that are necessarily saying that Chris is part of this smiley face
murder theory, right, It's the community or perhaps people just trying to link
these crimes to one another. I think so. I think it's mostly online
sluice because, like we just mentioned, there's never been any confirmation that a
smiley face was found in Chris's case, and if there is, they never
released it publicly. But I think it's been classified because they've had all these
other drowning deaths which took place during this small window of time over the course
of eleven days in the Midwest, and I do think that smiley faces were
found with the other victims. So I guess people are automatically assuming that Chris's
case is connected, but we don't even know if the smiley faces have any
significance, Like, just because you find a smiley face stick or nearby does
not mean that a gang of killers is responsible for killing all these people.
So if I said, I feel like this is horse crud I'm on the
right path. I think, Yes, that's about what I'm gonna say next.
Yeah, okay. I was like, I don't buy this. He
says, you were telling you, and I went, what is happening here?
Why? Why? Ashley was just tucking in her daughter when we took
a break between our episodes one and two, and Robin and I were talking
and be like, a smiley face is so ubiquitous. It's something that is
literally everywhere. It would be in like the nineteen seventies, like seeing a
peace sign somewhere or the like, you know, late sixties, early seventies,
seeing a peace sign. It would be something that would be graffiti literally
everywhere. So the chance of finding a body in a proximity of that type
of graffiti is pretty high. When you're looking at like, you know,
only this many bodies. It's not that many, right, but you think
of how many people either die accidentally or are murdered, the chance of them
being in the proximity of a smiley face or you know, at that time
period of peace sign would be pretty high. So it just seems so ridiculous
to me. Anyway, Well, the entire smiley face murder theory phenomenon has
become popular online among true crime puffs. The entire thing has pretty much been
discounted by most law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, who do not believe
that any of these deaths are connected at all, and that most of them
were just tragic accidents brought on by alcohol. They believe that the appearance of
any smiley faced graffiti is nothing more than a coincidence and dispute the notion that
all these men were victims of a serial killer or gang of killers, and
quite frankly, I'm inclined to agree with them, As the smiley face murder
theory is one true crime conspiracy I have never found that compelling. We could
probably do an entire podcast about this topic, but I think we should switch
the focus back to Chris's story. No, I do not believe that Chris's
death is connected to any smiley faced murder conspiracy, and I know that at
least one suspect has implied there is a connection, but we'll get back to
that in a little while. And while there likely wasn't any foul play involved
in most of these other so called smiley face deaths, something shady definitely did
occur in Chris's case, and there is still a big mystery here, agreed.
And that's all I get to say about that. Yeah, when you
were described and I just went, what in the heck? Like there was
nothing. There's not much evidence at all in this case, much less to
link it to some serial killer groups where even the victims don't seem to be
linked in anyway. So very very bizarre. So we'll have to start from
the beginning and talk about the weird circumstances of how Chris went missing in the
first place. All we know is that he exited the Loane Tree bar and
left his girlfriend and friends behind. But while some of the employees tried to
claim that Chris walked out on his own, the implication seems to be that
he was tossed out by the security supervisor and that an off duty cop named
Mike Casey was the one who set this in motion. Even though Casey was
working security for the adjacent Hennepin Center for the Arts rather than the actual bar,
the Loan Tree was apparently a prominent hangout for cops, and Casey was
a regular there, so you can see why the employees might have listened to
him. Since Chris's girlfriend, Ashley Rice, actually worked at the bar.
She seemed to be well acquainted with Casey, particularly since he allowed her to
borrow his uniform shirt as part of her sexy Halloween costume. We do know
that Ashley introduced Chris to Casey as her boyfriend. Casey was apparently very flirtatious
with her, and he ultimately wound up driving Ashley home after Chris disappeared.
Now, I should make it clear that it's never been officially confirmed that Ashley
and Casey were involved in some sort of affair, But even if they weren't,
I can see how this whole situation would look bad for him. Casey
was married and he had kids, and on the surface, it appears that
he arranged to have a younger girl's boyfriend removed from a bar so he could
have her to himself that night. And since this boyfriend went missing and turned
up dead, you can't imagine the potential scandal. Yeah, and the fact
that people say that Casey was incredibly flirtatious with her and he ends up driving
her home is very upsetting. And we have this guy who has the ability
to get Chris removed from the bar. He's the same person who's allowing someone
to borrow his uniform since he's off duty, and it just seems very distasteful,
unprofessional. If nothing else, these are young kids, and this is
a police officer. You don't need to be partying with college kids at a
bar and flirting with some college girl, especially if you're married. Did something
happen, Maybe not, but your behavior is something that I guarantee if your
wife was watching, she wouldn't be very proud of. What would she say
if one of the officers was like, well, you know, there's this
girl, Ashley who works at the bar. We know your husband does security
for Hannah Pin and he hangs out at the Lone Tree, and clearly that
you were acquainted. He lent her his uniform for her Halloween costume, and
then later on he drove her home. How do you feel about that?
I know if it were me and that was my husband, I would not
be having any of that. I would be extremely angry, especially when you
learn that there's all these other rumors surrounding him flirting with her and getting the
boyfriend ejected. That could cause major strife in a marriage, But it is
certainly not a reason not to question Casey, given the fact that Chris disappears
and is later and later winds up to be deceased. All that being said,
we're not trying to imply that Casey killed Chris or at any direct involvement
with his death. Given how lax the Minneapolis PD was at investigating Chris's disappearance
and how quickly they wrote off his death as an accident, it's easy to
assume they were covering up some foul play in order to protect one of their
own. Well. I do believe they were trying to protect Casey, but
not because he was a killer. It seems obvious that the reasoning for removing
Chris from the bar was completely unjustified. The story seems to be that a
drink was spilled on Chris's lap, causing the staff to assume he was so
drunk that he urinated himself, though in actuality it does not sound like Chris
was all that intoxicated at the time. Whatever the reasoning was, one thing
which cannot be debated is that it was pretty negligent to toss Chris out under
the street on a freezing twenty degree night while he was dressed in nothing more
than a thin Halloween costume. If they didn't want to let him back inside,
at the very least, they should have grabbed his coat for him,
given him the chance to retrieve his wallet. He's in cell phone from Ashley's
purse. Hell, they wouldn't even let him speak to his friend who was
still inside the bar, and drove him there that night, so Chris had
no ride home, without any means to pay for a cab ride or call
someone. The guy literally had no other options but to attempt to walk back
to his place on a cold, dark night. It's incredibly disgusting to think
of the negligence that they operated under. Chris is wearing, like you said,
a thin Halloween costume. We all know what those feel like, that
awful silky sea through material. And he had worn his jacket there right,
He had covered up with other winter clothes because it was so cold outside.
He had given Ashley all of his his belongings, including his keys and cell
phone, and he was responsible and had somebody else drive him there. You
don't kick him out on the street as a kid and say best of luck.
You go find his party and tell them guess what your friends leaving the
bar. That means you are to get out and have them leave with him.
You make sure he's dressed appropriately, and if you're assuming he's so intoxicated,
you get him a ride home. You don't send him out in the
middle of nowhere as a kid intoxicated and hope for the best. It's just
not the way you're supposed to do things. Yeah, and that's why I
think they were probably acting under Casey's directive that even though he didn't work for
the bar, he was a police officer, and they pretty much said get
him out of here by any means necessary. And that's why they were so
inflexible about letting him back inside to get his coat in his personal items.
I just feel like somebody could have got a coat for him, Like,
did nobody have the presence of mind to think that this could end in disaster
if he was indeed intoxicated, or even if he wasn't. You're giving his
kid no means to contact anybody to come and pick him up. He can't
even get into his apartment because he doesn't have his keys, he doesn't have
a vehicle, and he's got no coate in his twenty degrees outside. It
is so irresponsible and so upsetting, and I can't imagine what his family felt
when they found out that those were the circumstances for which Chris was ejected.
It was just so negligent. And the point is, if Officer Casey was
the one who gave the order for Chris to be removed from the bar when
he was not an actual employee there, then you can imagine some potential liability
issues. Even if Casey had no direct involvement in Chris's death, he paved
the way in allowing it to happen. And if his motive for kicking Chris
out of the bar was to make the moves on his girlfriend, and this
would not only look bad for Casey, but the entire Minneapolis PD. Remember,
they tried to justify their decision not to interview Casey by saying they did
not want to potentially break up his family. So I think their lack of
follow through on Chris's death was not so much an attempt to cover up a
murder, but an attempt to cover up irresponsible behavior by one of their officers.
This would also explain why the employees of the Lone Tree Bar became so
defensive about sticking to their story about Chris leaving on his own and why their
owner told them not to speak with anybody without an attorney present. For all
we know, the police might have legitimately believed that Chris's death was nothing more
than an accident and hope the case would just go away, but did not
anticipate just how resilient the Jenkins family were at seeking answers. Remember, Tim
Dolan was not the Minneapolis Police chief at the time that Chris died, so
he may not have felt any loyalty towards Casey, which prompted his decision to
have the investigation reopen. Oh, a new set of eyes, a new
fresh body, and a police department can change everything. So when Chief Dolan
takes the role of chief and he, like you said, has no loyalties
towards Casey, doesn't need to protect anybody, and says, there's this kid's
death three to four years ago that we really need to reinvestigate. I love
that he sits there and he reopens it. I would like to know what
causes him to change his mind later down the road. And he went to
all that effort to say, instead of being undetermined, I'm going to rule
it a homicide and go from there and then announced that there's actually progress and
possibly making an arrest in the case, pressing charges, and then what twelve
years later on a television show, He's like, I don't really know what
happened. It's possible as an accident in our suicide. Well, then why
did you change the ruling. Yeah, there's definitely a lot missing from that
story, but we mentioned this on our last episode. But the Lone Tree
Bar has since gone out of business, so at least karma ultimately got to
them in the end. Now, even though police tried to push forward the
theory that Chris fell into the river while attempting to the problem is that canine
units use multiple bloodhounds to track Chris is sent to an underground parking garage across
the street, a location he would have had no reason to visit on his
own, even if you don't put much stock into the accuracy of tracking dogs.
Fragments of a feather, which seemed to match the headband from Chris's Native
American costume, were found in the garage, so I think that's a pretty
good indication he was there. And there's also the fact that Chriss sent came
to an end in a parking stall which was apparently used by one of the
Lone Tree Bars bouncers. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of this
case, as the specific details are pretty iffy. The only source I've seen
for this claim about the parking stall is the book case Studies in Drowning Forensics,
which is co authored by one of the Smiley Faced detectives, Kevin Gannon,
as well as criminology professor d Lee Gilbertson, and they devote an entire
chapter to Chris's case. All it says is that the stall had been occupied
by one of the bouncers and one of the bloodhounds produced a mild hit for
Chris's sen when they checked this person's vehicle, But it's never been made clear
which bouncer they're referring to or if they were directly involved with Chris's removal from
the bar. Chris was seen heading north when he walked away from the bar,
and as far as I can tell, he was not being followed by
any of the bouncers, so I'm just not sure what circumstances would lead to
him winding up at that particular stall across the street. The Bloodhounds also followed
Chris's sent through the downtown area before it came to an end at the northbound
ramp of Interstate ninety four. But if Chris wound up in a vehicle traveling
in that direction, who was driving and where were they going? It's so
disturbing. Remember that there was the anonymous source who came forward and said that
they had actually been drugged by bouncers at this bar, and that they had
been attempted to be apprehended and kidnapped by bouncers from this bar. Had their
friend unintervened. Well, then all these signs points to the fact that could
that really have been a practice that they were doing. It's really disturbing.
Like you said, things don't really line up with this. There's really no
details that are present to explain who these bouncers were. There seemed to be
a pretty big bar, right that several people were working there. But how
are the bloodhounds hitting there? If he wasn't present in that stall in the
parking garage, and if he wasn't somehow in that downtown area on the ramp
at the interstate makes me wonder that maybe after Chris was ejected there was this
bouncer from the bar who offered like a sympathetic hand and says, sorry,
we can't let you back inside, but if you follow me to my car
in the parking garage, I'll give you a ride home. I mean,
that's the only real explanation I can think of for why Chris would go into
that parking garage on his own. And if he willingly climbed in the car
with a bouncer and then was taken somewhere and harmed, that might explain why
there's no evidence of foul play. But then again, since there were blood
droplets in the garage, maybe he was attacked there. But if it was
his blood, wouldn't we likely have seen marks on his body for where that
blood came from, unless he got like a spontaneous nosebleed. Yeah, that
is true. They never conclusively determined if that blood belonged to him, so
for all we know, it might not have any relevance to the case.
Now, we previously mentioned that the Breaking Homicide episode shared two pieces of information
about the Lone Tree Bar which had never been released publicly before. Shortly before
he left, Chris apparently interjected in an altercation between two men, one of
whom was angry that some creepy guy who walked in off the street was hitting
on his girlfriend. All Chris did was play the role of peacekeeper and prevent
a fight from taking place. But if he left the bar, the creepy
guy may have been bitter that Chris interfered, so we could have followed him
down the street and eventually caused his death. I'm not sure if Chris's removal
from the bar was related to his involvement in the altercation, but since he
was left standing alone outside, this may have provided an opening for someone to
go after him. Him and our second piece of new information involves the anonymous
informant who came forward and agreed to be interviewed in the Breaking Homicide episode.
As you'll recall, he shared a story about having his drink laced with GHB
at the Lone Tree Bar two months before Chris's disappearance, which led him to
being taken outside by two of the bouncers and nearly abducted in a vehicle.
Since traces of GHB were found in Chris's body, you could easily assume that
someone laced his drink with a drug, and shortly after Chris left the bar,
he passed out, allowing someone to take advantage of the opportunity and abduct
him. One of the things that's really overwhelming in this case is how many
potential explanations could have happened. Right. This could have been someone we know
nothing about. It could have been the bouncers. It could have been that
individual who claimed who was supposedly a murderer he and his brother. It could
have been a gang abduction. It could have been these people who he broke
up the altercation. I mean, there's so many different incidents that happened to
this twenty one year old kid that night that could have played into what happened
to him, and yet there's almost nothing. We're sitting here saying, look
at all the potentials of what could have happened, and yet I'm not really
sure if any of them have more weight than the other. The GHB that
was found in Chris's body, one thing that's really difficult is is that something
that was produced by his body after death or was it something that was ingested
prior to his death. Because GHB could have made it where he wasn't able
to fight back, where he wouldn't have had defensive wounds on himself and could
have easily been suffocated with a bag or a pillow or a heavy blanket or
something like that, and he wouldn't have had any marks on his body.
So there is a potential there, JULSI, you would said, like,
if it was anything else, wouldn't you have seen injection marks or you know,
places where he was bound on his body. Maybe some kind of sedative
like a GHB that was put in his drink could explain why he didn't have
defensive wounds on him. So now I'm going to talk about the GHB angle
because a very famous name that we've talked about on the podcast before actually weighs
in on this topic. I don't know. I mean, this informant story
sounds like it falls into smiley faced murders conspiracy theory territory. I mean,
is he trying to imply that there's a gang of people who like to lace
young men's drinks with GHB and use this as an opportunity to abduct them from
crowded bars, and then they proceed to murder these victims, toss their bodies
into a body of water, and leave smiley faced Booker fee behind as their
calling guard. I mean, I know there are predators who visit bars in
attempt to take advantage of patrons by lacing their drinks with date rape drugs,
But an organized conspiracy in which multiple people attempt to abduct someone from a public
place and a van sounds a bit over the top, and I have my
doubts that's what happened to Chris. Besides, even though traces of GHB were
out in the system, the body can't generate this substance naturally after death.
On the Breaking Homicide episode, the actually consulted with renowned forensic pathologist doctor Cyril
Wecked In case you've never heard of him, Doctor Weckt is considered to be
one of the top figures in his field and has consulted on thousands of cases,
some of which we've discussed on this podcast. After reviewing the evidence,
weck concluded that the amount of GHB and Chris's system was consistent with having been
generated by his body, and he did not believe that Chris was drugged prior
to his death. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I mean,
it was, you know, the alcohol level in his body wasn't very
high. Alcohol can also be produced after one's death, right where the decomposition
and the breaking on the body creates that as well, and GHB those chemical
components can begin to crystallize in form inside the body after death as well.
So it's so difficult because of the months that his body had been decomposing and
set into that water. But what was fascinating is that because of the cold
weather, it was pretty well preserved. So it's one of those back and
forth like decomposition wouldn't have been super severe on his body, but just shorts
amounts of time can change the chemical makeup inside even if the external part of
the body is not decomposing. Now we have one additional lead from the Lone
Tree Bar, and that's the eyewitness who allegedly saw a group of ten or
more people attacking an unidentified person in front of the pizza joint across the street.
This pizza place was located right next to the parking garage, so if
the person being attacked was Chris, they could have taken him into the garage
against his will and subsequently driven him away in a vehicle which is parked.
Installs eighty nine or ninety droplets of blood residue were also apparently found near those
stalls, which would support the idea of someone being violently attacked. One theory
which has been pushed around is that the alleged attack could have been a gang
initiation, and that Chris was targeted at random and was simply in the wrong
place at the wrong time. While I can certainly believe that a gang might
attack a random, innocent victim in the street of some sort of initiation,
I'm not sure that they would go to the trouble of loading the victim into
a vehicle, driving away from the scene, and disposing of their body.
In situations like this, I'd assume that gangs would prefer to lea their beating
victims on display in public in order to send a message. But if this
beating actually took place, and the victim was Chris and the perpetrators were not
members of a gang, then this provides a logical explanation of how he wound
up in the parking garage and was ultimately abducted. Of course, this does
not explain why ten or more people would decide to gang up on Chris.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's ever been specified which time this alleged attack
took place, and if it occurred shortly after Chris left the bar, if
it occurred while the bar was still open and the staff was working inside,
then I think this then I think this would discount the idea of people like
Officer Casey and the bouncers being involved. However, the biggest issue with believing
that Chris was the victim of this violent attack is that there were no noticeable
signs of foul play or bruising on his body. Remember, the Jenkins family
specifically cited the lack of bruising as evidence to support their theory that Chris was
still alive for days after he went missing, as he had recently sustained bruises
while playing lacrosse. If he was held captive for a while, then this
would have given the bruises time to heal. So, unless Chris was severely
beaten and subsequently kept alive somewhere while his injuries healed, I think there should
have been more evidence on his body if he was violently attacked by ten people.
Okay, let me ask you this. I agree, Jules. If
there were ten people beating him, I think he definitely would have been covered
in bruises. But let me just throw this out there. He could have
been killed and immediately put into frigid, cold waters. It was twenty degrees
outside, the water was icy. His body was basically frozen in the water
iced over snow for months. Bruising can radically slow or not develop as severely
if it's in ice or if you're cold. They always say, like,
you know, if you get an injury, put an ice pack on it
immediately and they can minimize the appearance of the bruise or things like that.
Is it possible that an immediate submersion in ice water stop some of that from
happening. I don't know. I've never really looked into that. I'm not
a medical expert, but it does take bruises sometimes a long time to develop,
and if you're dead, like does bruising couldn't emerge on your body after
you've already been killed. Liver mortis is like bruising, yea, yeah,
But if you're in ice. I'm wondering if that water just seems like it
would have almost like frozen his body. Would the blood have frozen and just
manifested differently in the presence of bruising. I think if the bruise hadn't developed
by the time he went into that ice and he had died, I don't
think the bruise would maybe continue to develop. Yeah, I'm wondering just because
of the cold. I mean it's possible, right because I don't think that
the blood won't continue to pool in those places after you die. So if
the bruise isn't already there, it won't continue to develop because it will go
to the lowest point on the body, right, because the heart isn't pumping
and gravity takes place. And then you also coupled with the cold temperatures,
but the severity of a bruise, like, yeah, you hit your leg
on something, you might not have a bruise developed right away, but if
you've been punched or like beat up, typically you can see the beginning stages
of a bruise, so much so that an experienced medical examiner would be able
to see that trauma in that skin. I would think, Well, I
also don't I definitely don't think that he was held for days and then put
back into this you know, Native American and generally had everything tucked in and
presentable. I just don't think that's the case. I wouldn't have kept his
moccasin covers and all of these different accessories to his costume intact to put back
on him after several days of holding him hostage. I just I don't see
that being a very plausible explanation. Just a good question for you, Robin.
So these bruises from lacrosse, are these known bruises that his family actually
saw or that other people saw. Are we just theorizing that he'd likely had
these bruises because he had this practice that day and he'd had a game recently.
Like, I get the idea that, yeah, he typically had bruises,
and it's weird that we found none. But it seems like the family
are very sure that he had specific bruises. Do you know if that's true
or not. I haven't heard any specifics, so I'm thinking this is just
an assumption because he was not living with his family at that time, so
they wouldn't have been able to see any bruises he had on his body.
And I think they're just saying, well, because he was a lacrosse goalie,
he often got bruises. But I don't think they ever confirmed that he
got any bruises during the practice and the games he played prior to his death,
so for all we know, he didn't have any and they were just
kind of using that as an absumption, saying, well, it was common
for him to have these bruises, so therefore, if they're not on his
body after his death, that means he was alive for an extended period of
time. But I don't think that we can say that with one hundred percent
certainty. But now we're going to discuss the part of this story which causes
the most confusion. When exactly did Chris's body enter the Mississippi River. It
sounds like many people are skeptical that he could have remained in the water undiscovered
for nearly four straight months. This is why his family suspects he was alive
and held captive for an extended period of time before he was killed. Since
Chris's lungs seemed to weigh a lot less than normal for a deceased individual with
healthy lungs, they have ascribed to the theory that he was slowly suffocated to
death, possibly with a plastic bag over his head. Whoever is responsible then
plays Chris's body in the Mississippi at an unknown location before it floated down to
the upper Saint Anthony Falls Damn and was finally discovered. I have to admit
that trying to figure out what actually happened here is pretty difficult. One thing
I'm pretty certain of is that, due to the lack of broken bones or
injuries, it's very unlikely that Chris wound up in the river after falling or
being tossed off one of the bridges in the area. This lends credence to
the idea that someone placed Chris in the water after he was already dead,
which would explain why he was found with his arms crossed in front of him.
I agree with the assessment from doctor Michael Baden that if Chris had gone
into the river while he was alive, he would not have been in that
position. His shirt probably wouldn't have still been tucked in, and he likely
would have lost his slip on moccasins, and it seems doubtful that a clump
of Chris's own hair would have been clenched in his fist, as grabbing one's
hair and pulling it out just does not seem like something a person would do
if they had fallen into some water and were struggling to swim ashore. However,
the analysis from the hydrologists at the University of Minnesota only adds more confusion
to the case, as they found it most likely that Chris's body had to
have entered the river sometime in early February of two thousand and three and floated
to the damn after the thaw on the twenty seventh. But if that's the
case, where was Chris during the preceding three months? Was he really being
kept alive somewhere all that time? No, I don't think so. I
just don't think so. I think that he was put into the water shortly
after he was killed that night. I think that when you look at the
fact that he has his hair clenched in his hands like that he had ripped
out his own hair. The only thing I can think is imagine someone wrapping
something around your head and pulling tight to suffocate you, or putting a pillow
over your face and pressing down on your face, and you gripping at the
corners of that pillow trying to push it off your head. And I could
see you grabbing a fist full of your own hair in the process while you're
trying to push your attacker off of you and get the item off of your
face. I think he was d that water. It's icy, it's snowy.
They say that the river had iced over, that it was twenty degrees.
Then he went missing and only got colder as we progressed from October to
February when he's found. And so I just think that there weren't a lot
of people down by the water. If there were people down by the water,
you wouldn't necessarily be able to determine a body against wood or a log
or some kind of rock structure that has ice clustered all around it. The
body could have easily been caught directly under the ice or kind of frozen to
another item, and you just wouldn't have known it was a body. I
do not think someone held him against his will for days, much less months.
I don't think so either. I just think the likelihood of that is
so low, especially because we don't see any marks on his body. His
costume is pristine, And what would be their objective? But did they ever
speak about any signs of sexual assault or anything on the body, Like if
there was something like that, we likely would have heard about it. Would
we not have Robin. I think so. Yeah, they've never given any
indication that there were signs of sexual assault on Chris's body, because if there
were, then you could completely rule out accidental debt. That's pretty much concrete
evidence that he was assaulted and likely murdered, So that if there's no sexual
assault, why is someone going to hold Chris captive for a long period of
time. Well, on the aforementioned breaking homicide, they came up with a
potential theory to explain where Chris's body could have been. Minneapolis had a parcel
of land known as Nicolette Island, which is located in the middle of the
Mississippi River, underneath the Hennepin Avenue Bridge and a short distance northwest from the
location where Chris's body was found. The island was searched multiple times during the
time period he was missing, and while bloodhounds did detect his scent, they
never found anything. Nicolette Island is easily accessible by road from the mainland,
and the northeast section of the island has a series of underground utility tunnels which
people have been known to hang out in, and one of them is known
as Satan's Cave. It earned the name because there are images of demons and
Satan carved into the walls. So I don't want you to think that we're
trying to imply that Chris was taken there and sacrificed in some sort of Satanic
ritual or something. However, it is a place one might be inclined to
hang out and party on Halloween night if they were feeling adventurous. What's interesting
is that these tunnels contain shafts filled with water which can flow into the Mississippi
River. If for whatever reason, Chris's body wound up in one of these
shafts, it could have remained under water and been relatively well preserved for around
three months or so until it eventually floated into the river. If this occurred
at the time when the Mississippi froze over, this would explain why the body
was in the river for weeks before it floated downstream and eventually arrived at the
upper Saint Anthony Falls down where it was discovered on February twenty seventh. This
is a very intriguing theory which would account for Chris's whereabouts during that four month
period and explain why search teams never found anything on Nicolette Island, and even
if Chris's body wasn't in the caves, it could have been submerged in the
water somewhere around the island for months without being discovered. But of course,
what this doesn't account for is how Chris would have wound up on Nicolette Island
to begin with, since he didn't have a ride home. Perhaps Chris got
into a vehicle with someone who convinced him that Satan's Cave would be a cool
place to hang out and party before driving him there. It's possible his death
may have been nothing more than an accident which was covered up. Of course,
if you're a conspiracy theorist, you could assume that Chris was attacked and
abducted by the Smiley Faced Gang after he left the Lone Tree Bar, and
they thought it would be cool to kill him inside a place called Satan's Cave.
Okay, so I'm not a conspiracy so I'm gonna go ahead and scratch
that last one. I honestly think weather and the temperature of the water had
more to do with this than anything more nefarious than that. I think he
was killed and dumped in the water on Halloween night, and his body was
simply frozen in the elements. It was difficult to search for We hear cases
all the time where investigators say, I knew we had three weeks to find
the body, or else we'd have to wait till spring to find it,
because there's just a it's complicated. When ice and snow and you know,
things freeze over. It changes the way everything looks, the terrain, the
way that that river flows, it all changes. And so the fact that
he went missing at such a critical time when the weather was changing and getting
colder. I think his body was in that water the night he died,
and I think that was Halloween night. So I think now it would be
an appropriate time to talk about Jeremy Alford as a potential suspect. As recall,
Alfred claimed he was part of a gang called the Dealers of Death,
which was responsible for the deaths around thirty to forty people, and his right
hand man was nicknamed Zamilee. That sounds pretty absurd, but believe it or
not, it turns out that Somiley is actually a real person who was questioned
by the New Brighton Police Department after Jeremy Alford was charged with the murder of
Douglas Miller. His real name has never been disclosed, but he was apparently
on antipsychotic medication at the time and living in a tent by the river.
We mentioned in our last episode that the Hanneben County District Attorney's office had declined
to file charges against a suspect for Chris's murder in two thousand seven, and
I have a feeling that the suspect was Alfered. All investigators would say about
the suspect was that he was in custody in another state on an unrelated charge.
But even though Alfred murdered Douglas Miller in Minnesota, he was actually arrested
for the crime in Iowa before he was extradited. I've also deduced that the
witness who claimed he saw in a quain throw Chris off the heanepin Avenue Bridge
was Zamiley, But in addition to all the credibility issues with his story which
I mentioned earlier, Somiley apparently said that the victim's name was Andrew, not
Chris. If the only evidence they had against Alfred was Somiley's eyewitness testimony,
that I can see why they declined to file charges against him. Yeah,
I don't think Zamiley would be the most amazing witness when you put them on
the stand. However, as a homicide expert, how the hell have I
never heard of somebody named Jeremy Alford who supposedly killed thirty to forty people.
Yeah, he's only been charged with one murder, which was the death of
Douglas Miller, but he has never been connected to the deaths of thirty to
forty people. So yeah, I do think that is an exaggeration and that
there's no gang called the Dealers of Death. Okay, So he's claiming he
killed me, Yes, exactly, you think you? Okay, I literally
said her, and I went, who when you're telling me? I'm like,
come on, Ashley, rack your brain. Who's this person? And
I went, surely I would have heard of this individual. Okay. So
he's full of it, and so is smiling exactly. Okay, fair enough.
So it's funny. I was picturing you thinking, is this the guy
that the Alfred plea is named after? Shush, it's not, thank you,
it's not. Another thing which has caused speculation that Alfred might be involved
in Chris's death are issues with his alibi on Halloween Knight in two thousand and
two, Alfred's sister claimed that he was supposed to go trick or treating with
her and never showed up, though Alfred's girlfriend at the time claimed that he
was with her that night. But there have been rumors that Alfred was at
the Lone Tree Bar and may have crossed paths with Chris. So what if
Alfred was a creepy guy who was involved in the altercation Chris allegedly averted This
could have prompted Alfred, along with I possible accomplices, to follow Chris outside
and attack him before taking him away from the scene, murdering him and disposing
of his body. While here's my issue with the theory about Alfred being the
perpetrator. Just read up on the details about the Douglas Miller murder. If
you were to look up the definition of the words subtle, this would pretty
much be the polar opposite. Jeremy and his brother Louis proceeded to bludgeon Miller
with such items as a hammer and a metal bar, and they stabbed him
twenty times with a knife and barbecue ford. They then proceeded to burn down
Miller's mobile home with his body still inside, and fled the scene and the
victim's stolen van before dumping it in the river. The crime was so brazen
that it should come as no surprise that the Alfred brothers were arrested the very
next day. Now, compare that with Chris Jenkins's death. He was found
with no signs of trauma or violence on his body, which is why it
was so easy to assume that he might have been the victim of an accidental
drowning. In fact, the entire genesis of the Smiley Face murder theory is
that the perpetrators go to the trouble of making their victims' deaths look like a
drowning by leaving no noticeable signs of foul play. So if you believe that
Jeremy Alfred was a member of the Smiley Face Gay then this would mean that
he spent years participating in these very meticulous and carefully planned murders, but then
wound up getting caught because he decided to kill a guy in the most brutal,
unsubtle fashion possible. One issue I've always had with these claims that Alfred
and his crew were regulars at the Lone Tree Bar is that Alfred would have
only been nineteen years old on Halloween night in two thousand and two, and
the legal drinking age in Minnesota is twenty one. Of course, that doesn't
completely discount the idea of Alfred being at a bar at the same time that
Chris went missing, and it's possible that he was a regular because they were
pretty loose about serving alcohol to underage people. But unskeptical now. Alfred did
apparently divulge some inside information about Chris's death, which was not public knowledge at
the time, so I won't completely rule out the possibility of him being responsible.
But while Alfred has never directly denied any involvement in Chris's death, he's
also a braggard serving a life sentence who now has nothing left to lose,
so I can see why he might be inclined to string people along for his
own amusement. You're right, his MO doesn't line up with anything that happened
to Chris. Chris has found in his body's pristine, his costumes pristine,
There's no sign of injury, so whoever did kill him was pretty sophisticated.
Alfred. I was picturing some like fifty five year old like rough looking man
who's killed thirty to forty people, and come to find out it's some insecure
nineteen year old kid who doesn't know how to tell the truth, you know,
as much as he knows how to do much anything else. So it's
interesting to me that, like you said, he'd be willing to claim he's
like this head ring master of a deadly gang and has killed thirty to forty
p people, but he wouldn't want the notoriety from killing Chris. I mean,
if you're serving a life sentence and you want people to think you're one
bad mammagi Emma, then why not just say yeah, I killed him too,
and here's how I can prove it. It's a weird contradiction because when
he was questioned about Chris's case, his exact words were, I do not
like to comment on cases on crimes I have never been charged with or convicted
of. Yet at the same time, he's bragging that he's part of a
gang that killed thirty to forty people, So make up your mind, fella.
I've also discounted the idea of Chris being a victim of the Smiley Face
Killer or the Smiley Face Gang, and I haven't hesitated to express my skepticism
about the entire theory. If Chris was not murdered by Jeremy Alford or a
gang of killers, then what did happen to him? And most of these
other so called smiley face murders, you can come up with a logical explanation
to explain the victim's death, and it usually boils down to nothing more than
an intoxicated young person accidentally falling into a body of water. But Chris's case
is nowhere near that simple, and it's clear that something very odd did happen
to him. I do think there's enough evidence to suggest foul play, but
trying to figure out when and where Chris was actually killed is a real head
scratcher. This is one unsolved case where we have a lot of different pieces,
but they just don't quite fit together. I think the full story is
some sort of strange anomaly. A number of people showed poor judgment by having
Chris kicked out of a bar, and everyone went the extra mouth to try
and cover their asses after he went missing and turned up dead, which looked
incredibly suspicious. However, the actual circumstances of Chris's death may have nothing to
do at all with the events which took place inside the bar, and it
was just a tragic coincidence where Chris wound up crossing paths with a person or
pershins who did him harm while he was trying to find his way home.
Whatever happened, the Minneapolis Police Department really did a piss poor job at handling
Chris's case, and it's a shame that it would be four years before there
was a proper investigation. Sadly, even though Chris's death was reclassified as a
homicide and the Jenkins family received a formal apology, it doesn't seem like there's
been much progress with uncovering the truth. This is one case where I really
can't come up with a concrete theory for what happened, But I am inclined
to think that Chris met with foul play shortly after leaving the bar, and
that his body was concealed somewhere for months before it was discovered in the Mississippi
River. When Chris originally vanished. The slogun on his missing poster was someone
Knows Something, which, as you might know, also happens to be the
title of a very popular Canadian true crime podcast. But I think that slogan
does ring true because regardless of whether Chris's death was murder or an accident,
there has to be someone who knows something about what actually happened to him.
So, if you happen to have any information on the unsolved death of Chris
Jenkins, please call the Minneapolis Homicide Unit at six three six ninety two.
Tips that six one three six nine two eight four seven seven Jules Ashley,
any final thoughts on this case? Well, you guys weren't kidding when you
said this is one of those cases where it's very difficult to know what the
heck happened and who the heck did it because there's so many different explanations in
this set. You know what six hour period, five hour period where this
poor kid goes on hallomy night to a bar to hang out with his girlfriend
and his friends. He's kicked out under these circumstances that don't seem to make
any sense. And what could have happened, Well off to the police officer
could have had something to do with it, He could have had the bouncers
of the bar that could have had something to do with it. He could
have been the people that he was trying to break up in a fight,
found him outside and attacked him. It could have been a group of gang
members who attacked him. It could have been a stranger. It could have
been devil worshippers. It could have been all kinds of different things that came
across Chris's path and resulted in his death. I do not think that Chris
died from a suicide at all. He had plans to go on several job
interviews. He was there with his girlfriend that night and his friends having fun,
and he was still in his Halloween costume. So I just don't think
that would have been the result. After he gets kicked out of a bar
that he automatically says, this is the time I'm going to take my own
life. That usually just doesn't happen like that. But what's so heartbreaking is
that this family is in the same spot we are. They have no answers,
they have no idea what happened, and they've kind of been put on
a ferris wheel of a journey with the police department and with anyone really helping
them. Yes, it was ruled undetermined to start, but four years later,
there's a massive move where the new police chief says, we're changing this
classification. I apologize to the family. It's time to rule this as a
homicide. And he changes that and says to the family, you were right.
I validate what you said. And then almost years later he says,
ah, I have no idea what happened. This could have been a suicide
and accident or a homicide. It's almost going back on what you said.
And that doesn't feel good to a family who's been advocating for almost two decades
that their loved one was murdered. So for me, it's one of these
things where there was going to be an interest and there wasn't. It was
homicide. Now was it a homicide? The rigormarole that the family is going
through has to highly compound the grief. And this case is only from two
thousand and two. Guys. It's not like we're talking about a nineteen sixties
murder or something that happened in the eighties. This was in two thousand and
two, So people who would have been around at the time are likely still
very young, very healthy, very cognizant, and sound of mind. Someone
knows what happened to Chris when he left that night and maybe we're at a
point twenty one years later that relationships have changed and that time might be on
the side of this case. It would be to give this family answers.
While that's the furthest thing that they've gotten at this point, my heart goes
out to the family. I can't imagine what they dealt with initially when dealing
with the police department, having them say things like, of course is out
there sowing his wild oats, which is so ridiculous, and then knowing the
way in which the lone tree bar treated him, throwing him out into the
freezing cold without any cell phone, without a coat, without his keys,
and without any way of contacting anybody who could help him is just so rossly
responsible. And then the attitude about not questioning Casey, which I'm not saying
I think he has anything to do with it, but he may have been
able to give them some kind of information as to how exactly and why he
was ejected that they didn't want to break up Casey's happy family, and so
it's more covering up his bad behavior. And then we see Dolan step on
the scene, and like Ash just mentioned, the ruling gets overturned from accidental
to homicide, and I'm more inclined to be like seventy five percent homicide twenty
five percent accident. I don't buy suicide for a second. I just think
that so many things line up, like the state of his lungs being like
half the weight of like healthy lungs, which is common with suffocation. They
weren't filled with water, which you would typically see in a drowning. The
tuft of hair in his hand, I think goes back to what Ashley had
said about a bag being over the head. You might grab your own hair
trying to grab that bag off. I don't think if you're flailing in the
water, you would be grabbing at your own hair. And there's no evidence
of flailing. He isn't found in a position that a drowning victim typically is,
which is face down and arms out. He's found with his arms crossed
across his chest. I think the probability to he was found in Nicolette Island,
I mean I can go fifty to fifty. That seems like a logical
explanation for where a body could have been stash and then floated out once you
know the thawing started to happen and that could explain why searchers never found the
body. As far as who did this, I honestly have no idea.
I'm completely dumbfounded by this. I think there's so many possibilities and potentials when
we have so little evidence. I'm just completely confounded by this case. Yeah,
when I first learned about it several years ago, it was all when
I was learning about the Smiley Pace murder theory and I saw his name listed
on a list of potential victims, And of course I not hesitate to express
my skepticism about the Smiley Pace murder theory, and looking through most of the
cases, it's pretty obvious that they're just accidental drowning deaths. But I got
involved into Chris's and thought it was something different, where it's like, well,
even if it was an accidental death, you can find a lot of
people liable because the circumstances of how he was kicked out of the bar are
just so irresponsible that it's just a major tragedy. And you can understand why
people were thinking that there was some sort of cover up going on and that
something suspicious happened. We talked about in this episode. We've done so many
cases where victims have died in accidental death or they're deaths ruled a suicide,
and even though their families are certain that they were the victims of foul played,
the police steadfastly refused to change their perspective. So here it was just
a major eye opener when the police chief held a press conference to say they're
reclassifying Chris's death as a homicide and admitted that they were wrong and issued apology
to the family, because that almost never happens. But at the same time,
he made this announcement seventeen years ago, and we're no further in the
investigation, it seems, And now Chief Dolan says, well, I'm kind
of fifty to fifty now it might be a homicide, but I'm not one
hundred percent sure. So it seems that whatever this new investigation uncovered, they
have just not found any conclusive answers about what happened, or have never been
able to prove that Chris was the victim of a homicide. I mean,
there is a promising thing with Jeremy Alfred because he is a killer who's in
prison, and obviously the police thought there was a decent chance he was responsible.
But like I said, his one murder he's been confirmed of, he
brutally stabs someone twenty times and set their mobile home on fire. Whereas Chris,
there are no noticeable signs of foul play, and it just not fit
the profile of someone like Alfred, who only would have been nineteen years old
at the time Chris was killed. So I don't see him being able to
commit this very subtle, perfect murder. But at the same time, I
can't figure out what happened to Chris, Like, was this a premeditated thing,
did he get his drink drugg did someone follow him or lure him into
the parking garage, or did just Chris happen to cross paths with the wrong
person while he was walking home. There's just nothing that makes one hundred percent
complete sense. I am inclined to think he was a victim of a homicide
and that whoever killed him placed his body in the Mississippi River where it was
undiscovered for four months. But you just have to wonder how did they do
it, and what was their motive? And did they suffocate him? Is
that why there were no noticeable signs of foul play. We just don't have
any evidence to work with, and that's why this case is so frustrating,
and it's just so sad that his family has been without answers for two decades
now. But that's why we keep cases like this in the spotlight. Maybe
there is someone out there who knows the truth about what happened to Chris,
and I hope they do eventually come forward and possibly provide his family with some answers.