A group of retired New York City Police detectives and a criminal justice professor has developed a theory that a sinister gang has killed more than 250 young men across the country over the last several years.
The Daily Beast reported on the work Kevin Gannon, Anthony Duarte, Mike Donovan, and professor Lee Gilbertson are doing to prove the deaths were murders.
After 20 years of working the cases and having the theory rejected by police departments and even the FBI, the group is now spotlighting its work on a six-part television show called "Smiley Face Killers: The Hunt for Justice," that premieres Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. on Oxygen.
"To me, this is one of the most dangerous domestic terrorist groups in the United States and somebody needs to pay attention to them," Gannon told The Daily Beast.
Many of the suspected victims, whose deaths were all ruled accidental drownings caused by alcohol consumption, were smart, athletic, college-aged men. On the nights they went missing, they had gone out drinking.
Thirty-one of the men had GHB, a date rape drug, in their systems at the time of their deaths. Some were gay, and some appeared to have been strangled.
Further, the investigators have found smiley face graffiti or other graffiti they have tied to the gang painted on bridges and other structures where they believe the victim's bodies were dumped in rivers.
"What we've determined is they're a well-structured, organized gang with cells in major cities across the United States who drug, abduct, hold the victims for a period of time alive before they murder them and then place them in the water," Gannon told Oxygen.com. He added that the group communicates on the dark web.
The show on Oxygen will highlight six cases, and the investigators said they have identified suspects in three of them.