Speaker 1: There's three or four hundred cases. They're still happening, guys,
Speaker 1: these strange things and bodies being found all over the place.
Speaker 1: So be careful out there, don't get drugged, and stay
Speaker 1: safe in you if you're in that kind of like
Speaker 1: a range of young men, you know, stay together, you know,
Speaker 1: go out together and come home together. Women do that,
Speaker 1: they are living a fear of being assaulted or being drugged,
Speaker 1: and men some men don't, and they have to change
Speaker 1: their kind of sensibilities because there's some very nefarious people
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: In today's new episode, we speak with William Ramsey of
Speaker 2: William Ramsey Investigates and he wrote a great book called
Speaker 2: The Smiley Face Killers, and we get into that in
Speaker 2: this conversation, Lance, what'd you think of this interview?
Speaker 3: Well, I thought that we went on quite a ride
Speaker 3: here with mister Ramsey. He has been somebody who has
Speaker 3: been on our radar for a little while now and
Speaker 3: we finally were able to connect with him to get
Speaker 3: him on the show for an interview. I got to say,
Speaker 3: right off the top, a lot of his views on
Speaker 3: the Smiley Face Killer go many layers deep, and they're
Speaker 3: very very interesting. They don't necessarily align with mine, and
Speaker 3: I'm assuming they don't necessarily align with your views either, Tim,
Speaker 3: given the questions that we asked him in some clarifications
Speaker 3: that we wanted him to provide. But I will say again,
Speaker 3: this is quite a ride the listeners are about to
Speaker 3: go on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think there are several suspicious cases inside
Speaker 2: this large story, but certainly not every case is a
Speaker 2: murder in my opinion. But yeah, no, this is this
Speaker 2: is a fun one. I hope the audience enjoys it.
Speaker 2: Please let us know what you think on Spotify or
Speaker 2: YouTube and check out William Ramsey Investigates on YouTube and
Speaker 2: also on his podcast feed.
Speaker 3: And you can go to William Ramseyinvestigates dot com if
Speaker 3: you want to check out any of the books that
Speaker 3: he has written. He's got many books to choose from there,
Speaker 3: so you can go right to that website and order
Speaker 3: your copy today. Again, no matter your views, you'll still
Speaker 3: be entertained by all of the ideas that he has
Speaker 3: about all of the topics that he writes about.
Speaker 2: Okay, so please follow us on social media at Cross
Speaker 2: Based Podcast or Cross Based Pod. We're gonna break quick
Speaker 2: for commercial here and we'll be right back with William Ramsey.
Speaker 3: And we're back with mister William Ramsey.
Speaker 2: We are being joined now by William Ramsey. William, how
Speaker 2: are you today?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well, Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're so glad to finally get you on. We've
Speaker 3: been talking for what feels like half a year. I
Speaker 3: think it actually might be almost half a year that
Speaker 3: you know, we first made a connection and decided that
Speaker 3: we were going to collaborate and have you on the show,
Speaker 3: and maybe we could be on your show. But then
Speaker 3: you had jury duty.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Can you just let us know a little bit about
Speaker 3: your jury duty? Well, actually, before you do that, can
Speaker 3: you introduce yourself to the listeners anyone who doesn't know
Speaker 3: who you are, and then we'll get into your jury duty.
Speaker 4: Hi. My name is William Ramsey. I'm an author.
Speaker 1: I became a podcaster later, but I started out as
Speaker 1: an author literally fifteen years ago is when I published
Speaker 1: my first book, Profit of Evil. I've written five six
Speaker 1: books actually now one is kind of a lesser known book.
Speaker 1: It's called Alistair Crowley, a visual study, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of pictures about Crowley. But I've covered a lot
Speaker 1: of different topics, mostly stuff that people weren't really talking
Speaker 1: about for one reason or another. Crawley the West, Memphis Three,
Speaker 1: Occult Crow. I'm a lot of a cult Hollywood. I
Speaker 1: did Smiley Face Killers, and then I have five documentaries
Speaker 1: on my Patreon. Amazon wouldn't let me post them off
Speaker 1: to try to post them again, I was interviewing people
Speaker 1: for YouTube, and then my YouTube channels got taken away,
Speaker 1: I think in twenty twenty, and so I started kind
Speaker 1: of podcasting over COVID, and now my podcast, William Ramsey Investigates,
Speaker 1: which is really a general investigative reporting podcast, is in
Speaker 1: the top point five percent of the world.
Speaker 4: So I guess that's the top eighteen.
Speaker 1: Thousand podcasts or seventeen thousand or something like that.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 1: I post a lot of stuff, you know, on a
Speaker 1: lot of different topics whatever it kind of finds my
Speaker 1: interest or whatever. I'm researching a lot. So I've had
Speaker 1: a lot of guests who are knowledgeable about those subjects
Speaker 1: on my podcast.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's talk about one of your books. Now,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, you wrote several really interesting books. One
Speaker 2: of them is called The Smiley Face Killers, and this
Speaker 2: is a story that's kind of been around, and I
Speaker 2: guess been in our orbit, been in the true crime
Speaker 2: sphere for years. Back in the early days of this podcast,
Speaker 2: crawl Space, we actually did do some episodes on Boston's
Speaker 2: Vanishing Men back in twenty seventeen. I feel like we
Speaker 2: may have done some parallel work on this story way
Speaker 2: back then, but we have not looked into it since then,
Speaker 2: and it seems like a situation that I guess comes
Speaker 2: up every once in a while. And then recent stories
Speaker 2: like the New England serial killer and the Lady Bird Lake,
Speaker 2: those stories remind me of this story. So long way
Speaker 2: of asking you to just describe your work into this,
Speaker 2: and I understand you've been looking into these cases for
Speaker 2: a long time.
Speaker 4: It's been a while.
Speaker 1: I really started, probably in twenty sixteen or twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: My first case was a young man by the name
Speaker 1: of Joey LaBute in Columbus, Ohile. Now I was in
Speaker 1: the alternate media. I was always listening to Coast to
Speaker 1: Coast and I remember that there was one Coast to
Speaker 1: Coast about a smiley face killer by a woman. I'll
Speaker 1: call her Christy P. I don't want to mention her
Speaker 1: last name. She was talking with Annet Orghana. I forgot
Speaker 1: the guy's last name, the host. It was this rumor,
Speaker 1: so it was kind of like an urban myth to me,
Speaker 1: like I thought this was the thing. And she talked
Speaker 1: about these cases. There were forty cases at the time,
Speaker 1: and they were happening in the kind of Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 4: That was the perception.
Speaker 1: And the phenomenon is young man not woman, goes out
Speaker 1: at a bar, separated from friends, maybe starts acting strength,
Speaker 1: disappears to later be found in water. And it got
Speaker 1: the name smiley faced killers for people who don't know
Speaker 1: is because the original investigators, Kevin Gannon and Jeff Gilbertson,
Speaker 1: they found a correlation between this phenomenon and spray painted
Speaker 1: smiley faces in their original book, which is called Case
Speaker 1: Studies and Forensic Drawings. So I had heard that on
Speaker 1: coast to coast and as I was researching kind of
Speaker 1: the occult, I was doing a lot of research in Ducrolea.
Speaker 1: I kept seeing the smiley face in common culture. So
Speaker 1: I saw in fight club, I saw it, and watchmen
Speaker 1: and other places and kind of curious things and clothing
Speaker 1: and things like that. So anyway, I was online and
Speaker 1: I followed some of these people. One guy's name is
Speaker 1: Jim Smith. And then I followed this one case where
Speaker 1: a young man disappeared, Joe Labie, like I mentioned, and
Speaker 1: he was I think he was gay, and he was
Speaker 1: in a bar. The Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic was happening that weekend,
Speaker 1: so a lot of bodybuilders weren't down, and I said,
Speaker 1: if this guy ever ends up in water, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: freak out. So he was missing for nineteen days. I
Speaker 1: followed all of the television stuff I could find online,
Speaker 1: you know, kept like the investigations continuing. We have his phone,
Speaker 1: we don't know why he didn't go to his car.
Speaker 1: Where was he seen last fuzzy you know CCTV video
Speaker 1: which is suspicious from the night he disappeared out of
Speaker 1: the bar. He was known not to be a heavy drinker.
Speaker 1: He fit the profile of the other victims, usually a
Speaker 1: skinnier guy, kind of in the body body you know,
Speaker 1: size index or whatever on the skinnier side. So he
Speaker 1: kind of felt and Gilberton's notice this too. They're not fat,
Speaker 1: like most of the victims aren't fat, they're athletic. And
Speaker 1: Joey Lebute was on that so then nineteen days later,
Speaker 1: the huge searches fits all of the same phenomenon. Huge search.
Speaker 1: Young guy found later in the Seoda River not too
Speaker 1: far from where he disappeared, in kind of an eddy
Speaker 1: of the main river. When a place previously searched, which
Speaker 1: is very common, they're usually massive searches and the rivers
Speaker 1: are followed. So that was really where it triggered for me.
Speaker 1: It clicked, Okay, this phenomenon isn't a urban myth, this
Speaker 1: is actually happening. And then I just followed these other researchers,
Speaker 1: Like I said Jim Smith, there may be a couple
Speaker 1: others on Facebook. I'm not on Facebook anymore, but there
Speaker 1: were other people interested in really researching and categorizing, and
Speaker 1: that led to my first documentary on the Spiley Faced killers,
Speaker 1: who's abducting, torturing, and murdering college aged men in the US.
Speaker 1: So the original perception that there's this kind of smaller
Speaker 1: area in Northwest where it was happening was false once
Speaker 1: I really started researching, because I found cases in New York, Boston,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, Portland, a lot of water areas. It just
Speaker 1: was on my radar with other things because I really
Speaker 1: saw it. So then I kept following. I read all
Speaker 1: of Gilbert and gin and stuff. I kept abreast of
Speaker 1: things and was trying to follow cases. And then I
Speaker 1: just like, I think I've followed ten ten young men
Speaker 1: who've disappeared later to be found in water, Like I
Speaker 1: just couldn't know, Oh he's out, it's like Halloween and
Speaker 1: he disappeared from a bar. He's gonna be found in
Speaker 1: water in two or three days, and sure enough, found
Speaker 1: in water. So then I made a second documentary which
Speaker 1: was available on my Patreon. It's called Smiley Face Killers.
Speaker 1: The Global Slaughter continues because it was happening in the UK.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of these things in bath Manchester outside
Speaker 1: of London, the Thames River, and some.
Speaker 4: Of these cases I can't follow because.
Speaker 1: I'm unfortunately, you know, mono lingual, so I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, whether he's happening in Spain or Germany or
Speaker 1: some of the other but I could follow somebody. There
Speaker 1: have been a team effort. There's other people who sent
Speaker 1: me stuff from France and Netherlands and Germany in Austria,
Speaker 1: so these cases are happening. And then I just kept writing,
Speaker 1: and I always wanted to put it in book format
Speaker 1: because it's really kind of a saga of different researchers.
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned you did something in twenty seventeen with
Speaker 1: cryptid Antiquarian. I think that's a very important point in
Speaker 1: the research because after she Eliza Jeger posted on there,
Speaker 1: it created this huge firestorm of interest. There's so many posts.
Speaker 1: I think there were two thousand posts, and millions of
Speaker 1: people looked at that. Yeah, I live in Boston, it's
Speaker 1: happening all the time. Really opened and expanded my understanding
Speaker 1: to these cases, and then it led to the publication
Speaker 1: of my book in twenty twenty four. I already have
Speaker 1: a second edition of it, so I've kind of cleaned
Speaker 1: it up, but it's like four.
Speaker 4: Hundred pages of like knowledge.
Speaker 1: And I tried to include all the other researchers and
Speaker 1: all the other shows that I've done and the places
Speaker 1: where it showed up, like Gilberson and Gann and they
Speaker 1: did a six art series for Oxygen, so I thought
Speaker 1: that was important.
Speaker 4: It wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't broad enough. There were other articles like I
Speaker 1: did a Daily Beast article, things on fill and Oz,
Speaker 1: doctor Phil and doctor Oz excuse me. And then just
Speaker 1: like so many things happened in I think twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four there was just this rampage these Austin dusts they
Speaker 1: called the Ladybird Killer or whatever, but just this swath
Speaker 1: of like water dusts that are incredible. In Chicago there
Speaker 1: were like twenty in like a three or four month
Speaker 1: period and I can't really keep up. And there was
Speaker 1: some in New York City. There was like a lunar
Speaker 1: cycle disappeared in Texas became a hot spot. It was
Speaker 1: really something else. And then you know, finding some of
Speaker 1: these people who were doing it, Like I literally found
Speaker 1: a guy who committed the perfect It's kind of a
Speaker 1: perfect crime, right, the smiley faced killers. Like if you
Speaker 1: put in water, it's like people.
Speaker 4: Call it a drowning.
Speaker 1: There's evidence that could be lost, it's an easy close
Speaker 1: to a cop. So a lot of things that inhibit
Speaker 1: kind of people seeing it. But then you like see
Speaker 1: the families like this guy would never do that.
Speaker 4: This is suspicions. But I followed a.
Speaker 1: Guy by the name of Scarlett Blake, that was he
Speaker 1: was a trans sexual in Oxford, UK who committed the
Speaker 1: perfect crime on a guy who a krano. If he
Speaker 1: hadn't admitted he would never have been arrested and he
Speaker 1: would have got away with a perfect crime. So that's
Speaker 1: the motive. Like, that's what people don't get, Like, what's
Speaker 1: the motive. This guy had no motive other than to
Speaker 1: just be a murderer. That's what people don't get. Why
Speaker 1: would you do this? They fit the same crime. This
Speaker 1: guy w A. Krano was a Spaniard in Oxford. He
Speaker 1: was out with friends. He worked at BMW at a factory.
Speaker 1: He was partying. He got separated from the group. He
Speaker 1: was drunk and a predator in the guise of a woman.
Speaker 1: It looked like a woman and very covered like faces covered,
Speaker 1: no distinguishing characteristics. All in black takes this guy Hore
Speaker 1: Krano into a place away from CCTV. It's all been
Speaker 1: speculatd like this premeditation. They're thinking, like I'm not going
Speaker 1: to get caught. And then Cranio shows up in a
Speaker 1: little kind of river dead and they just said he
Speaker 1: must have tripped and fell in and then he found
Speaker 1: They found out that this guy was formerly a man,
Speaker 1: now a woman was involved based on the testimony of
Speaker 1: another person, So of course he gets arrested. The trial
Speaker 1: is done in the UK and they never asked him
Speaker 1: if he had ever did it before.
Speaker 4: It says like, okay, you got you.
Speaker 1: For one and you're going to jail and that's it.
Speaker 1: Nobody seemed to have asked him, like are you a
Speaker 1: serial killer? Like what is going on if you've done
Speaker 1: this other places? And the interesting thing about Scarlet Blake
Speaker 1: is he came from it seems like he came from
Speaker 1: a well off family. He's able to travel around. He
Speaker 1: came to the US, and he seems to be in
Speaker 1: Texas around like some of these other deaths happen. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be the perfect crime? And that goes all the
Speaker 1: way back to Joey La Butte, which seems to be
Speaker 1: at the perfect crime too, because somebody's like these thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of body boulders come into town and then
Speaker 1: maybe commit a crime and leave. Some people have speculated
Speaker 1: that this is a type of like thrill kill, and
Speaker 1: I think that there's some element of truth to that.
Speaker 1: This guy, Scolar Blake, you know, was a thrill killer.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of information to take.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 3: And thank you to our sponsors.
Speaker 4: Back to the program.
Speaker 2: Really interesting stuff yeah, I would love to break down
Speaker 2: some of these aspects here. The first thing I would
Speaker 2: like to talk about is the graffiti. The smiley faces
Speaker 2: certainly a common image in pop culture and certainly a
Speaker 2: common piece of graffiti for decades. I guess, where is
Speaker 2: that line on what constitutes as one of these killings
Speaker 2: when we're talking about like graffiti, Like you if there's
Speaker 2: one scene like under a bridge, like a half a
Speaker 2: mile away, does that count? Where is this line?
Speaker 1: There are some that are very prominently sprayed. Seemed like
Speaker 1: the most recent case was a guy his name was
Speaker 1: a shamous I forgot his name, but it was in
Speaker 1: kind of the Chicago area, but he had one sprayed
Speaker 1: kind of on the wharf where he was found. And
Speaker 1: there's one other guy heart who had it above like
Speaker 1: the river. Zach Maher had one on the bridge where
Speaker 1: he disappeared. So those are the more recent ones that
Speaker 1: I can think of. It seems to be a calling card,
Speaker 1: and it seems to be an occult associated with cults,
Speaker 1: So there's an esoteric and an exoteric understanding. It just
Speaker 1: could be a smiley face. But if you follow some
Speaker 1: of these like pop artists and occultist, they use the
Speaker 1: smiley face. Like one of the interesting things is like
Speaker 1: that song Bad Habits by Ed Sheeran, Like he's got
Speaker 1: characters in there with the smiley face. He's got smiley
Speaker 1: face insignia on balloons and he's re enacting kind of
Speaker 1: a smiley face killing. But also this kind of deep
Speaker 1: occultist group, the Order of Nine Angles, who advocates going
Speaker 1: out and calling innocent people. And so like I've done, say,
Speaker 1: you know, segments on the Order of Nine Angles. I
Speaker 1: actually wrote a book of my book before this book
Speaker 1: was a book about the Order of Nine Angles that
Speaker 1: believes in human sacrifice. That's just how this phenomenon got
Speaker 1: its name. I liken it too, like a black widow
Speaker 1: name where the woman's always killing her husband or other
Speaker 1: types of crimes. It just got that moniker and it's
Speaker 1: never gone away. Another guy online, he's really good. He
Speaker 1: studies these cases, but he's called them stage drowndings, and
Speaker 1: so I like that term stage gam grounding too. And
Speaker 1: so you know, the cops aren't looking for it. It's
Speaker 1: usually the public. So the public will find it, or
Speaker 1: somebody will send the name in or if you read
Speaker 1: the book by Gilbertson and Gannon. They have very prominent
Speaker 1: pictures of these spray painted smiley face so something really
Speaker 1: was happening in the regions where they were studying it.
Speaker 3: Are you trying to suggest that Ed Sheeron is the
Speaker 3: smiley face killer on these airwaves?
Speaker 1: I'm suggesting that whoever's around him or knows him knows
Speaker 1: a lot about the occult and has put it into
Speaker 1: his music videos and lyrics and and go look at
Speaker 1: his tat is too.
Speaker 4: He has got a.
Speaker 1: Prominent yellow smiley face right around his chest. A lot
Speaker 1: of these guys do, like I mean, you see them
Speaker 1: weird places and weird like insignias and tattoos. So people say, like,
Speaker 1: is this smiley face killers? Like the happy face killer?
Speaker 1: Like Jess Person who was a trucker. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of slaughter of like innocent women with truck driving. It's
Speaker 1: completely different, Like the phenomenon is completely different. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's like one guy, Like people want to
Speaker 1: get stalted and like, oh, so you think that there's one.
Speaker 1: I think this is a phenomenon that people are involved.
Speaker 1: They're communicating, it's their kind of interest and they're into
Speaker 1: very dark stuff BDSM and it's some kind of really
Speaker 1: dark underground, and there is a correlation between these people
Speaker 1: and the BDSM. There's really is they're into very dark practices,
Speaker 1: like BDSM gets dark, and there's like I think I
Speaker 1: had one victim in DC. He was at a club
Speaker 1: that sided as a BDSM club. There seems to be
Speaker 1: a connection. Well, there's one guy, his name was nas
Speaker 1: Muhammad in Georgia. He's associated with BDS. I'm in these
Speaker 1: very dark clubs in Atlanta. I'm not saying that there's
Speaker 1: one guy at all. I think there's people like this
Speaker 1: guy scrab Up Blake. I think he was network. They
Speaker 1: did a sloppy, lame job on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to get into this idea of a
Speaker 2: network and the smiley faces being a calling card. But first,
Speaker 2: if you don't mind, can you take us through the
Speaker 2: idea of the staged drownings, because a lot of these cases,
Speaker 2: looked at individually, are very suspicious. I will say not
Speaker 2: all of them, in my opinion, but a good amount
Speaker 2: of them very suspicious look when looked at individually, and
Speaker 2: it seems like and correct me if I'm getting any
Speaker 2: of this wrong, but it seems like the people go missing,
Speaker 2: there's a search they are later found deceased in the
Speaker 2: water in the area that has been searched already, and
Speaker 2: their cause of death isn't necessarily drowning.
Speaker 1: Sometimes right, sometimes the medical examiner either doesn't know or
Speaker 1: just attributes to drowning even in certain situations. But I
Speaker 1: think the phenomenon is really disappeared at night. So there's
Speaker 1: standard drownings. People go to a lake. Hey mom, I'm
Speaker 1: going to the lake with my two friends, and some
Speaker 1: mishap happens during the day. These are different. Almost every
Speaker 1: case that I've covered is the case of a young
Speaker 1: man out at a bar. They're drinking, or something's going
Speaker 1: on at a bar. They act strange, they disappear. Of
Speaker 1: all the cases that I've correlated, I'm at like four
Speaker 1: hundred or three hundred, nobody sees them go into the water.
Speaker 1: This is a huge tell, Like why doesn't somebody see
Speaker 1: them splashing around or say like, hey, John, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go don't jump in the water. So zachmar leaves a
Speaker 1: bar in downtown Boston at two am. He doesn't get
Speaker 1: led in by the bouncer back in, which is weird.
Speaker 1: He texts and says like I'm going to do my
Speaker 1: own thing. Then he disappears and later to be found
Speaker 1: in water. That's one example. So all these people are
Speaker 1: not found, then they're just attributed to drowning when they're
Speaker 1: found a week later, some are forty days later. That's very, very,
Speaker 1: very very unusual, is that these people pop up. Dakota
Speaker 1: James and Pittsburgh is that he was found literally forty
Speaker 1: days after he went missing from downtown Pittsburgh, and his
Speaker 1: body was in pretty good shape. There was no slippage
Speaker 1: on his body, which would should have happened if he
Speaker 1: had been to the water. Where was he for forty days?
Speaker 1: What was he doing? Was he kept alive? This phenomenon
Speaker 1: has the same parameter. So all of the cases I've studied,
Speaker 1: nobody sees them go into the water. They never say
Speaker 1: that they're going to go jump in the water. And
Speaker 1: then a lot of them I think are given poor
Speaker 1: jobs by the medical examiner. I've had in a number
Speaker 1: of cases. I've probably had three cases off the top
Speaker 1: of my head of where the medical examiner clearly bungled
Speaker 1: the case. Dakota James is one of them. The original
Speaker 1: case that I studied is a guy by the name
Speaker 1: of Patrick McNeil doubt case was actually never divulged to
Speaker 1: the parents that he had injuries consistent with a blow torch.
Speaker 1: And then there was I think a more recent case
Speaker 1: of Riley Strain in Nashville. They said they had water
Speaker 1: in his lungs and just said, oh, he drowned. I
Speaker 1: mean he said he had air in his lungs. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: So if he drowned with the air, they just called
Speaker 1: it to dry drowning. And a lot of these investigators,
Speaker 1: like these analysts just to make these conclusions with no evidence.
Speaker 1: There are very like there's very obtuse criminal investigators online
Speaker 1: who've made a career talking about people who disappeared, and
Speaker 1: they just said, well, Riley Strain must have went down
Speaker 1: to the river and to take a leak and fell
Speaker 1: in and drowned, Like they literally believe that that's their excuse.
Speaker 1: Like I've known a lot of men who you know,
Speaker 1: don't have to use the bathroom inside of a formal structure,
Speaker 1: and I've never heard of them like accidentally falling and
Speaker 1: then just choking on their own water and dying. And
Speaker 1: Riley Strain has tons of problems too, because they didn't
Speaker 1: find his boy for a week, two weeks after extensive search,
Speaker 1: very sophisticated professionals.
Speaker 2: By the way, that is a huge part of this
Speaker 2: mystery because the time between when this person, you know,
Speaker 2: all in all these cases goes missing and then they're
Speaker 2: unaccounted for for several days or set up to you know,
Speaker 2: forty days, and then they are found in water. Where
Speaker 2: could they be if this is some kind of network
Speaker 2: that is following I don't know, some kind of guidelines
Speaker 2: or trying to recreate the same type of disappearance and
Speaker 2: murder that flies under the radar. How do they pull
Speaker 2: it off?
Speaker 1: It's a great question, just exactly like Scarlett Blake. Blake
Speaker 1: in Oxford, UK pulled it off. He pulled it off.
Speaker 1: The conclusion of the court was that he drowned him
Speaker 1: in this room and then they just the local police
Speaker 1: just said it was a mysterious drowning. And so I
Speaker 1: think that's happening over and over. I think that's the
Speaker 1: intent that this kind of mo has been shared. It
Speaker 1: goes back to the mob. The mob has been dumping
Speaker 1: people in water and stuff like that, or drowning people
Speaker 1: or tying weights to them. So it's just another means.
Speaker 1: But some of these cases are like Montgomery, this guy
Speaker 1: out of Philadelphia, he's found in like three feet of water.
Speaker 1: He should have just stood up. And this guy, Tommy
Speaker 1: Booth the same thing. You know, he's around sketchy people.
Speaker 1: He's telling his mom like I'm afraid for my life
Speaker 1: or I'm afraid of these people. And then he's found
Speaker 1: in a place that he's already has already been searching,
Speaker 1: like a foot of water. It doesn't make sense. So
Speaker 1: people don't understand how dark some of these people can get.
Speaker 1: That's they're very dark. One of the cases that I
Speaker 1: looked into, which really didn't fit into the smiley faced
Speaker 1: killings is the death of a He was an LGBT
Speaker 1: type person. His name was He's easy name to remember,
Speaker 1: Kevin Bacon, the same name as the actor. The actor
Speaker 1: actually got up. The famous actor got involved in this
Speaker 1: case because he disappeared outside of I think Lansing, Michigan.
Speaker 1: But he was online, like a lot of these guys
Speaker 1: are on the gay apps and stuff. But he was
Speaker 1: on this gay app and he met some person that
Speaker 1: they were scheduled to meet. He was last seen at
Speaker 1: this guy and this guy had him in a dungeon.
Speaker 1: You know, he was found in the dungeon hanging from
Speaker 1: his ankle. I mean super dark. Kevin Bacon was found
Speaker 1: in the dungeon and this character who did it to
Speaker 1: him cut off his testicles and fried him almost like
Speaker 1: something from Silence of the Lamb Lambs ate his testicles. Like,
Speaker 1: that's super duper dark. I mean, this is all validated.
Speaker 1: The guy's name was Liatunsky wrote about it in I
Speaker 1: think the section was potential Killers. I think it's the
Speaker 1: section that I had in that Offender Typology. Yeah, chapter nineteen.
Speaker 4: I read about that.
Speaker 3: So this is something that's, in your opinion, based on
Speaker 3: your theory, that is very well organized by very dark
Speaker 3: people who are very secretive and sort of wily. You know,
Speaker 3: they're able to elude CCTV footage or it becomes fuzzy,
Speaker 3: so they're able to manipulate it. How far up does
Speaker 3: this go though? Did they operate on the dark web?
Speaker 3: How far up the like law enforcement or political systems
Speaker 3: do they go?
Speaker 4: Great question? I don't know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's scary about the Dakota James
Speaker 1: case is it seems like he was selected. He was
Speaker 1: pre selected, he had gone through something where he had amnesia,
Speaker 1: and he was in some kind of black kind of
Speaker 1: van car and he called a frent and says, I
Speaker 1: don't know where I am, come get me. And then
Speaker 1: I think six weeks later he disappeared. So it seems
Speaker 1: like he was kind of a pre selected person. So
Speaker 1: how far up it goes, how far the cover up goes.
Speaker 1: If you look into kind of like Jeffrey Dahmer as
Speaker 1: an exemplar, like drugging and GHB, he got kicked out
Speaker 1: of a couple of bathouses because he got caught drugging victims.
Speaker 1: He was into drugging people. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: the same thing with these so called drowning victims, is
Speaker 1: that they're pre drug with GHB or something like that
Speaker 1: and they're either not checked for. And that was really
Speaker 1: one of the main themes of the Cannon and Gilbertson's
Speaker 1: book is this, so this network they might be learning
Speaker 1: from each other. If you look at like pedophilia, another
Speaker 1: very dark subject, a lot of these guys are in
Speaker 1: like groups like I've done Sandbort trials and there were
Speaker 1: online things where these guys trade things, they tell stories
Speaker 1: they've met up in the dark web and exchange things
Speaker 1: and so the BDSM people, I think, do that too.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is kind of like a
Speaker 1: very dark subset of the bda SM community of ballgags
Speaker 1: and gimps and weird stuff like that. I think I
Speaker 1: included it in my documentary, but not in the book.
Speaker 1: Was this kind of idea of kink this documentary that
Speaker 1: I saw, I think it was on Netflix, but you'd
Speaker 1: literally had a room and you had people all over
Speaker 1: the world could watch this streaming. So it's not like
Speaker 1: a stream like this or something else that's live, but
Speaker 1: streaming like people getting you know, chained and whipped and
Speaker 1: like horrible stuff. Well, imagine those people with that interest
Speaker 1: where they go into snuff films and stuff. Films have
Speaker 1: been validated like they're real, Like we know, stuff films
Speaker 1: have been made, whether it's Leonard Lank and I think
Speaker 1: Richard Ang or Robert ng or the guy Mignotti from
Speaker 1: Canada who killed somebody live, you know, So something like
Speaker 1: that very dark maybe happening yet.
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Speaker 3: So there also is a very dark side too, like
Speaker 3: all sexuality Yeah, I'm wondering if you think that there's
Speaker 3: any sort of crossover or carryover between Jeffrey Epstein's network
Speaker 3: that he developed the people that he manipulated into helping
Speaker 3: him out, or maybe not manipulated, they volunteered. I don't know,
Speaker 3: but there was a network there that was facilitating those acts.
Speaker 4: Is their overlap here, It's.
Speaker 1: A great question. I think that some of these guys
Speaker 1: who are doing an outwardly are heterosexual. They have kind
Speaker 1: of a heterosexual persona, but they married or have a wife,
Speaker 1: and I haven't cocluded a couple of those guys.
Speaker 4: In the book.
Speaker 1: There was this guy, Edward Landfeir who externally had you know,
Speaker 1: a heterosexual wife, but he had two dudes locked up
Speaker 1: in his house and one of them got out. And
Speaker 1: it's from that area of where a lot of these
Speaker 1: smiley faced killings happen. So it's another instance of like
Speaker 1: men are captured and kept for a while alive happens,
Speaker 1: but then those are the only things he gets busted for.
Speaker 4: Is land fear.
Speaker 1: Another guy was a guy out of Perth who externally
Speaker 1: was like married and had girlfriends, and then he goes
Speaker 1: out at night and hits on drugs and rapes men.
Speaker 1: But another one of the interesting things is, like you
Speaker 1: come across people who've like done research from There's one
Speaker 1: I included in my last chapter, this psychic Sloan Bella,
Speaker 1: who did great work on the West Memphis three too,
Speaker 1: Like she kind of caught she understood it. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of people think that the cover story is real,
Speaker 1: but she could kind of see through that.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: She did some kind of reading in May four, but
Speaker 1: she talked about how this phenomenon goes all the way
Speaker 1: back to record executives in Chicago, something I never had
Speaker 1: heard before, Like, and it kind of makes sense because
Speaker 1: the smiley faces known as kind of this acid house
Speaker 1: symbol going back to the seventies and eighties used in
Speaker 1: a lot of like motifs.
Speaker 4: Or a lot of album covers and things like that.
Speaker 1: Her kind of take on this kind of network idea
Speaker 1: makes sense. And how far up this I mean, like
Speaker 1: I said, look up toafar As Campbell if you want
Speaker 1: to have a bad day.
Speaker 2: So what's the purpose of this culture organization to.
Speaker 1: Abduct and rape man? Yeah, cast them away? I mean
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I don't think that there's a
Speaker 1: higher political purpose. Maybe some of these guys really are
Speaker 1: dark magicians and high level occultists who just want to
Speaker 1: cause misery and you know, do a colling like the
Speaker 1: own order of nine ang order of nine angles. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know. I don't know. I know the phenomenon's happening.
Speaker 1: I think I think my book proves that the phenomenon's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think some of the men had like bars,
Speaker 2: we're drinking, So I think the idea of many of
Speaker 2: these men being drugged is interesting. I wish there was
Speaker 2: some kind of federal task force that would look into this,
Speaker 2: but it's got to be challenging when you consider, you know,
Speaker 2: these are jurisdictions from all over the country and all
Speaker 2: over the world really, and like medical examiners that are
Speaker 2: different and they have, you know, their own conclusions, different
Speaker 2: interpretations on the science and the waters being cold warmer
Speaker 2: in different areas, things like this. So I'm saying there
Speaker 2: are a lot of variables. You mentioned that they are
Speaker 2: drugged and raped. Is that something that's being found in
Speaker 2: many of them.
Speaker 1: No, No, there's not a lot of evidence. I think
Speaker 1: that something's going on, something dark, which is why I
Speaker 1: put this whole thing like this picture of broken that
Speaker 1: was a video by nine inch Nails. What's why I
Speaker 1: use that picture for my documentary in twenty seventeen. They're
Speaker 1: not even looking for it. There's evidence of torture in
Speaker 1: some of these people, clearly Dakota James. I'm not a
Speaker 1: medical examiner, but I could tell he had a rope
Speaker 1: around his neck from his autopsy pictures. Same with McNeil,
Speaker 1: like very credible analysts have looked at his autopsy report
Speaker 1: and said, this guy's been hit with a ballpeen hammer
Speaker 1: like this doesn't make any sense. So whether they're being
Speaker 1: sexually abused, I don't know. But one of the interesting things,
Speaker 1: and included in the intro of my book in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, is that the FBI made a statement
Speaker 1: that these are all alcohol related drownings. You know, that's
Speaker 1: that's really They got drunk and fell in the water
Speaker 1: and died, which I think some people do, that happens
Speaker 1: to them. The problem with these ones is that sometimes
Speaker 1: their bodies aren't found for like two weeks, very obvious
Speaker 1: to anybody who studied drownings, like most of the body's
Speaker 1: surface within about two or three days due to decomposition,
Speaker 1: depending on water temperature current, things like that.
Speaker 3: This smiley faced killer concept has been sort of disregarded
Speaker 3: by the FBI. What is the purpose of the FBI
Speaker 3: disregarding this when they could be addressing it and you know,
Speaker 3: helping increase public safety or public awareness?
Speaker 4: Right, great question, It's a good question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: When you watch the mechanics of the FBI, sometimes they're
Speaker 1: not exactly up and up. And some of the ex
Speaker 1: FBI agents are not on the up and up either.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've studied John Douglas and Wow or Ken
Speaker 1: Lanning or some of these other guys who, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: kind of use their FBI credentials for not good aims.
Speaker 1: As a way to put it, I think the overwhelming
Speaker 1: amount of evidence is that something is going on, that
Speaker 1: there's there's I mean, I'm almost at like five.
Speaker 4: Hundred cases at this point.
Speaker 1: You have these like situations in like Austin that Beggar belief.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's other ones like that. He didn't die.
Speaker 1: His name was Christian Pew, but he was clearly drugged.
Speaker 1: He was found like three days later close to the river,
Speaker 1: and he had a lot of injuries. He went into
Speaker 1: the hospital. He doesn't remember anything. So these amnesia, it's
Speaker 1: usually caused by something, maybe not alcohol, but something else,
Speaker 1: like maybe they're blackout drunk. Some of these guys are
Speaker 1: not drinkers. Like one of the deaths in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: I think his name was Martinez Beca. His brother knew him,
Speaker 1: like they worked out every day together and said like
Speaker 1: he would only drink one or two drinks.
Speaker 3: I feel like that could be countered with well, that
Speaker 3: would cause the person to blackout quicker.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of anybody to take one or two
Speaker 1: drinks in blackout.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying is if they're not drinkers and they
Speaker 3: go to a bar and maybe being encouraged, the effected
Speaker 3: alcohol are going to be a lot heavier on a
Speaker 3: non drinker if they go one or two more than
Speaker 3: what they were used to going.
Speaker 1: He was also out of character, he said to his brother,
Speaker 1: said that he was acting strange. And there's like a
Speaker 1: spade in these downtown areas, whether it's Nashville, New York
Speaker 1: or Austin of drugging in other instances, So not just
Speaker 1: like people disappearing, but people getting drugged and rolled and
Speaker 1: having their belonging stolen and ghb'd for one reason or another.
Speaker 1: These incidences of the smiley face killing phenomenon are taking
Speaker 1: place in a larger place of like either people at
Speaker 1: the establishment or the bartenders drugging people for one reason
Speaker 1: or another for the various reasons. You know, some of
Speaker 1: these guys wake up at a strip club and they
Speaker 1: don't remember anything, and their credit cards are max taut.
Speaker 1: They don't know how it happened, and somebody you know,
Speaker 1: caught their credit card and did this, so there's financial gain.
Speaker 1: But think about if you're like one of these other guys,
Speaker 1: like I mean, Jeffrey Dahmer.
Speaker 4: Would do that.
Speaker 1: He would keep people there, right, he would kill them
Speaker 1: and drug them and try to rubatize them. There was
Speaker 1: another guy outside the UK. He was into GHB and
Speaker 1: he would drug people and then fake their death. They
Speaker 1: called it. In the UK, the most successful rapist in
Speaker 1: UK history was this very unassuming guy who was from
Speaker 1: like Indonesia. He looked like an accountant. He looked like
Speaker 1: the least threatening person you'd ever seen in your life.
Speaker 1: And they say he drugged like over one hundred and
Speaker 1: two hundred guys. And what he would do is he
Speaker 1: would wait until the bars went out so he would
Speaker 1: sleep all day like and that he was a predator.
Speaker 1: He was basically his Serengetti was Manchester after the bars
Speaker 1: came out, and he would go look for people to
Speaker 1: try to get him back into his home and drug him.
Speaker 1: What was his name, I can't remember it now. The
Speaker 1: average person isn't thinking on those terms. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, you know, the average
Speaker 2: person are not expecting crime to be committed near them,
Speaker 2: to them, in front of them, but it does happen,
Speaker 2: as we know. One other variable. I do just want
Speaker 2: to mention this isn't a question. I do have a question,
Speaker 2: but the legalization of marijuana and edibles are something that
Speaker 2: could be I don't know that maybe he could be
Speaker 2: considered in this story to some degree because a lot
Speaker 2: of that if you buy it from a dispensary, is regulated,
Speaker 2: but if you're not buying it from a dispensary, it
Speaker 2: is not regulated, and the effects can be wild and
Speaker 2: can be exacerbated by the use of alcohol. So I
Speaker 2: just want to point that out. But this Ladybird Lake
Speaker 2: story out of Austin, tell us what you know of
Speaker 2: this area, and this is kind of almost like becoming
Speaker 2: its own story or own part of this larger Smiley
Speaker 2: Face Killers story.
Speaker 1: It's an incredible story, like it was a place that
Speaker 1: wasn't that busy, which is also kind of an interesting aspect,
Speaker 1: is like Austin was never on that map. You know,
Speaker 1: I wrote about it in my book. I have a
Speaker 1: full chapter on it. Then all these people started popping
Speaker 1: up one after another in Austin. I mean, there's even
Speaker 1: more documentaries online about it, like people have gone down
Speaker 1: like famous kind of YouTubers and things like that have
Speaker 1: checked it out.
Speaker 4: But it got its.
Speaker 1: Own name, the Lady Bird Lake Killer or something like that.
Speaker 1: It really was a remarkable series of cases, and it
Speaker 1: made the national media. I called it the Austin Waterduts.
Speaker 1: But there was like all these guys I've been in
Speaker 1: contact with some of them. People started showing up. Gutierra's
Speaker 1: was the guy's name, I said, Martinez, But Martin Gutierres,
Speaker 1: Christopher Pooh, I mentioned Axtel, Jason, John Jonathan Honey, John
Speaker 1: Hayes Clark. These are all right back to each other,
Speaker 1: all in kind of like twenty twenty three, twenty four,
Speaker 1: and so it's gotten that name, the Ladybird Killer but
Speaker 1: it's within the larger context of these phenomenon happening in Chicago, Houston,
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of deaths actually in the Houston
Speaker 1: Bayous end this year, well actually late twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: so it's not exactly a water death, but it seems
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of bodies being dumped in Houston
Speaker 1: men recently. They see it only you know, within the
Speaker 1: local area of where these things happen, and not the
Speaker 1: big picture that, hey, this phenomenon is happening all over
Speaker 1: the place, Boston, New York, Chicago, Austin, and he plays
Speaker 1: a major city.
Speaker 3: Why is the calling card a smiley face when it
Speaker 3: could be something a little bit more significant, something that
Speaker 3: isn't going to be considered so common.
Speaker 4: That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's kind of a mystery. Like I'm
Speaker 1: not an occultist. I don't hang out in secret societies
Speaker 1: or leave calling cards or try to tell somebody that
Speaker 1: this is actually really what happened, or this was a
Speaker 1: human sacrifice or something like that, So you'd have to
Speaker 1: find out the purp. Like I think that somebody should
Speaker 1: go talk to Scarlett Blake and see what else he
Speaker 1: knows he's in jail for the rest of his life
Speaker 1: in the UK, and he might divulge what he was
Speaker 1: really into and he was hanging out with. In the
Speaker 1: recent cases, there haven't been a lot of the smiley
Speaker 1: faced symbols found, not to my knowledge. So it's really
Speaker 1: something that moniker is something that really Gilbertson and Gannon
Speaker 1: applied to all this stuff. I've found some other on
Speaker 1: the somewhat recent cases, maybe within the last ten years.
Speaker 1: But yes, I don't know. I don't know why they
Speaker 1: use that or that it's a it's a mystery to me.
Speaker 2: Well, William, this has been a really interesting conversation.
Speaker 3: I really am akimbly fifty minutes went by.
Speaker 2: I know, I am really glad that we have spoken
Speaker 2: with you about this story and about your book. I
Speaker 2: know our audience is going to appreciate that we have
Speaker 2: gone into this deeper than we had in years past.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we appreciate your time. This is a really,
Speaker 2: really fascinating topic.
Speaker 3: You have to promise to come back on because like
Speaker 3: this barely scratched the surface of the questions that I
Speaker 3: have for you. And when we just came to the time,
Speaker 3: like again, fifty minutes went by so fast here, so
Speaker 3: truly fascinating.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Yeah, thanks for having me. There's three or
Speaker 1: four hundred cases. They're still happening, guys. You can go
Speaker 1: watch my two documentaries and read my book which is
Speaker 1: over four hundred pages of all the cases that include
Speaker 1: like the cryptid Antiquarian and all these other people saying
Speaker 1: these strange things and bodies being found all over the place.
Speaker 1: So be careful out there, don't get drugged, and stay
Speaker 1: safe in you if you're in that kind of like it,
Speaker 1: that range of young men, you know, stay together, you know,
Speaker 1: go out together and come home together. Women do that.
Speaker 1: They are living a fear of being assaulted or being drugged,
Speaker 1: and men some men don't, and they have to change
Speaker 1: their kind of sensibilities because there's some very nefarious people
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 4: I've included them in my book.
Speaker 1: My A Fender typology section kind of lays it out
Speaker 1: pretty openly. The family, even adelaide and all this stuff, drugging, abduction,
Speaker 1: keeping them home, you know, keeping people alive for a bit.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable.