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Episode 7: Smiley Face Killa
66 Plays2 days ago
The sleepiest boys in podcasting are back. This week Q takes the reigns, breaking down The Smiley Face Murders and David McGowan's Programmed to Kill while Biccy gets drunk in his pyjamas.
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Transcript
Personal Comfort and Social Media Plans
00:00:36
Speaker
Hey, Twinkies. Vicky's wearing the cutest pajamas. He's in like actual pajamas. Well, it's a Sunday, so I'm not putting clothes on.
00:00:50
Speaker
how long do you sleep How often do you sleep in your pajama set um To be honest, I mostly wear them like around the house. I don't tend to sleep in like the full set because I get too hot. I'm like a hot sleeper. They're like your juicy- Yeah, my juicy couture equivalent.
00:01:08
Speaker
Okay, nice. i love that. Now people are going to think I'm wearing a juicy couture tracksuit. I'm not for the record. I do love- I'm wearing very nice black cotton pajamas. I am really into house clothes.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah, like me too. I have a lot of like comfy sweats. and i'm not like someone Some people like to walk around naked or almost naked in their homes, but I'm not like that and neither is my boyfriend. We're both really into comfy house clothes. No, I'm the same. I don't i don't like to walk around naked. I have definitely have like house comfies. I also really like um just throwing like a really nice coat over the top of your like house comfies and going going just to like the shop or something.
00:01:56
Speaker
I just feel like I'm in like a movie or something when I do that. Yeah, it's very in my year of rest and relaxation. um Speaking of, at the top, we are...
00:02:08
Speaker
working on getting better about releasing episodes more regularly. But we do have a um an Instagram. It's twinkdeathpod.
00:02:20
Speaker
um And I'm working on building it up. So... If you would like to follow us, please, please do. um Because that's what we're going to report on it.
00:02:32
Speaker
And I'm actually considering, i haven't even talked to Bicky about this yet, but whatever, I'll talk about it on the pod. I'm considering making this alt account that I have, just making it TwinkDeathPod. Twitter? On a Twitter account.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, I have this like alt that has like almost a thousand followers. And I'm like, I was thinking of just deleting it, to be honest. But I'm like, what if I just... turn it into the a twink. You should do I feel like that's totally cheating, but I also think cheating is fine.
00:03:04
Speaker
It is cheating, but it's like, don't know, whatever, you know? I think it's a good idea. and Okay. I'm considering doing that. And for those of you who follow me on my main Twitter, which I've had back up, thanks for ten ten k followers following Twink Theory.
00:03:23
Speaker
I know. I've been going viral a lot lately, and I've been putting our... um our last episode, which was a while ago now. but yeah I've been putting it underneath every viral post. So I wonder that's good i wonder if more people have ah heard or listened to the Dunkelgrafen episode or not. I guess we'd we'd have to look into that, you know? Yeah.
00:03:46
Speaker
It's funny because I thought, well, by the time this comes out, we'll have put out the episode that we did with Nanny. But when we started the episode with Nanny, um I cut this out, but i was I'm sure I said, like welcome to season two, episode two, and it was actually episode four. And then I was like, Jesus Christ, we've actually done a lot more than I thought. so Yeah, we're doing okay.
00:04:08
Speaker
We're doing okay. Yeah, definitely. we're we're We're going to beat our season one of 12 episodes, I think. Yeah. um Okay. Well, today we're going to be talking about two things.
Exploring True Crime Theories
00:04:22
Speaker
um One is something I've mentioned on the show a lot, which is David McGowan's program to kill. I'm finally going to tell Vicky about it because...
00:04:32
Speaker
I don't think I'll ever get Vicky to read that book. I'm going to just give you it. I might read it. You never know. Program to kill. But first we're going to do the smiley face killer. Cause I actually, this one is interesting to me. So I actually heard about this one, not from the news or from Reddit or from Twitter.
00:04:53
Speaker
um but just from a friend who lives in Austin. um and He just kind of casually mentioned it to me one time when he was visiting New York, maybe like probably years ago now. I don't even remember when this was.
00:05:08
Speaker
But basically, he told me that there was like some weird... ah deaths in the Austin gay community predominantly, and that some people like thought it was linked to the smiley face killer. so um And basically what he told me, and i'm going to tell you how I got interested in this before I go into like depth with the actual stuff, but he told me, like yeah, all these gay guys are being found dead in these kind of like remote...
00:05:39
Speaker
areas often in the water, um which are kind of close to the bars in Rainy Street, ah which is like a very popular nightclub area in downtown Austin, which is somewhat close to the water. But he was like, they would have had to walk like a while to get to the water. And I know this area very well. I spent my party years in this area and it is true. You would have to walk like a half an hour basically to get to the water. um But i said at the time that I'm skeptical that it's necessarily like, there necessarily is a serial killer because i was like, actually, if it's gay guys, it wouldn't be so weird necessarily that they would walk a while from a bar, especially if they were thinking of like using Grindr
00:06:30
Speaker
or thinking of hooking up, like they potentially would walk from the downtown area toward the river. interesting. I i've i have a vague idea of the Smiley Face Killer. I think I might have seen something on I think it was on E! Network years ago, they might have had a documentary or something about it. But like um but listening to you like talking about this stuff like by the river, there's a sort of, I guess, like an urban legend or like conspiracy theory in in my city in Manchester about
00:07:08
Speaker
a serial killer who like pushes people into the canals and they call him the pusher. um and In Manchester, like the canals are like right by the gay village. like The gay village is sort of like by the canal, like literally right by the water, like on the water. So there's kind of this, like there's been, it's been going on for like, i don't know, 20 years or something. People have been saying that there's this like serial killer called the pusher who like pushes gay men in when they're like hooking up by the river. So it's, it's interesting, like the sort of parallels.
00:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i was, just like I said, though, like at first I was a little bit suspicious because most of these deaths were ruled accidental drowning. And of all the groups that I could see this happening to, it did seem more likely that it could happen to gay guys. Because I'm just like, it's not totally out of the question. i mean, I don't think it's totally out of the question for any drunk person, but it's not totally out of the question a gay guy would get on Grindr, they would agree to go hook up down by the river, and then like on their way back, fall on the river or something. And I actually have a personal connection before I even get into the Austin murders. um Plus Austin murders aren't necessarily connected to the smiley face murders, but I'll get into all of that.
Personal Experience with Stranger Danger
00:08:24
Speaker
But I one time did have a like an incident where I was like walking across the bridge and I was like very, very drunk.
00:08:34
Speaker
um And it was one of those nights where I was upset drunk. like I was like, I had like left my friends dramatically and was like crying and stuff like that. And this guy stopped on the bridge and was like, I'll give you a ride. And I was drunk. So I just got in his car and he did drive me to this weird spot by the river and like sort of try to hook up with me. And I got like really freaked out and I like opened the door and like ran away um But when but I started researching this, I like remembered that. And I was like, God, that is like so weird. like I don't know why I was so scared. It's possible that I was just drunk and like freaked out. like It is possible I didn't really... like I was misperceiving the situation. And it's possible that he thought...
00:09:22
Speaker
when I got in the car that this was like, but I was also like, something really scared me. So maybe, maybe I ran into this, this killer. um Although this would have been yeah years ago. It also just shows, I mean, the story just kind of highlights how,
00:09:40
Speaker
Like reckless young gay guys all because yeah I did just like march right into this car and like go with this guy where he literally drove me to like a secluded, like weird warehouse area, like on the road. It reminds me of um like um Debbie Harry always tells that story of how she escaped from Ted Bundy's car and like nobody believes it's true. It just reminds me of that.
00:10:06
Speaker
um I mean, like I said, I'm like completely open. I'll never know because I'll never be able to go back in time and like look at it with sober eyes. I'm completely open to the but to the idea that like there was nothing nefarious necessarily going on or the guy had like no nefarious intentions and he just assumed that I don't know. But it is a little weird.
00:10:26
Speaker
It is a little weird weird to pick a crying person sit up on the bridge and take them somewhere and think that you're going to have sex with them. I think that's really weird. And i also think like, even if his intention was only to actually hook up with you, I still would have and god got scared and run away.
00:10:42
Speaker
Like, I don't know. I think he did the right thing. Good. yeah Um, since, so, okay, here's the, okay, so let me
Austin's Rainy Street Murders and Community Response
00:10:51
Speaker
clarify. There's the Rainy Street murders, and then there's the Smiley Face Killer, and some people think the Rainy Street murders are connected to the Smiley Face Killer. So, Rainy Street, when I lived in Austin, which was now, wow we're getting close to, like, 20 years ago since I, when I moved, when I first moved to Austin. So, 19 years ago, I first moved there.
00:11:12
Speaker
um When I was 18, there was a street called Rainy Street, which was actually like so cute back in the day. Like it had it had bars, but it was like all the bars were kind of in these little bungalows. They looked like little. Do you have that word in England? Like they look. Yeah.
00:11:31
Speaker
They looked like little, like ah tree almost like treehouse vibes, you know what I mean? yeah And the bars were really cute. And there was one gay bar down there that was kind of like a leather bar, but it wasn't like super serious because it was like, the a Austin wasn't nearly as big as it is now then. It was about...
00:11:50
Speaker
half the size it is now. it's like It's almost a million people now, and back then it was 500,000. um So it had a much smaller city feel, and this street was super, super cute. But over time, Rainy Street has been completely developed um since there's been this huge influx of people into Austin. Now, if you go there, it looks nothing like what I just described. It's like big, fancy buildings, and there are a ton of bars still, but it's like It's like, what is called? Like bougie bars.
00:12:23
Speaker
Bougie bars, big apartment complexes. It looks very much just like like a big city area. um And from 2022 to 2024, a number of young men, gay or bisexual predominantly, seen at bars or clubs, were found dead in Lady Bird Lake.
00:12:46
Speaker
Um, so just want to talk one thing. I like always get confused. I'm to be really honest. This is like our bad with geography show, but I'm, i always get confused about what's the lake and what's the river. Yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
Don't be embarrassed because I had to Google where Greenland was today. Okay. I'm not crazy because the lake is like basically a part of the river. Oh, it looks cute. I've just Googled it. It looks funny. Yeah. But i i'm also I also want to be clear that I'm like not insane because it is like...
00:13:23
Speaker
It is like attached to the to the river. they just see It looks like a river to me. like It doesn't even look lakey. It just looks like a wide, wide river. They just call it Lady Bird Lake. I've always thought of it as the river that runs through Austin.
00:13:38
Speaker
So whatever. Anyway. um Okay, whatever. River, lake, you get the idea. So they started calling him, or you know if this person exists, the Rainy Street Killer or the Austin Gay Serial Killer. so I want to say at the top, the FBI and like local Austin authorities have said there is no serial killer. That's like their stance. They're just like, all these cases are basically alcohol-related, accidental drowning, or suicides. um And in a city of like one million people, like which Austin is now almost, 10 men...
00:14:20
Speaker
eat you know, drowning, killing themselves, or just dying of alcohol poisoning in a heavily populated bar area in a two-year period isn't necessarily that crazy. Yeah.
00:14:37
Speaker
I mean, that's just kind of like... Par for the core. yeah it's Yeah, it's just like... Is it part for the core or part for the course? and I don't know what that phrase is.
00:14:47
Speaker
But I decided to... Yeah. So... yeah um so That's just like, yeah. I mean, I think that like bars near a body of water is like a is like a serious ah safety hazard.
00:15:04
Speaker
yeah but it's false But it's also like most cities are that. Like in New York, for instance, there's like no bars that are not within like walking distance of the rivers. So it's just... i comment Wait, what river is in New York?
00:15:21
Speaker
Well, there's the Hudson on one side and the Easter. Oh, okay. Which is the one that that plane went in? Which plane? The plane that went in the river. It was a big thing.
00:15:32
Speaker
During 9-11? No, that was in the building. oh I don't know. I'm sure there was like a plane that like went landed in the river and it was like a big news story like a couple years ago something.
00:15:44
Speaker
Okay, maybe. i don't know. Maybe. I don't know either. thought It's irrelevant. In case you didn't know, Vicky, Manhattan is an island. I did know that. um I have been to Manhattan before as well.
00:15:54
Speaker
Okay, my point is is, if you're at any bar in Manhattan, you're not you're not really that far from water because i think Manhattan, like, all the way across is, like, two miles maybe tops.
00:16:07
Speaker
Okay, so anyway, the community, like, the gay community in Austin, like, has a lot of issues with this being ruled an accident. So... um Basically, they argue that it's statistically impossible for like all these men to be found dead in the same body of water with the exact same kind of manner of dust. They're all white men. They're pretty much all gay or bisexual.
00:16:37
Speaker
They're all relatively strong and young. So it's like they weren't like bad swimmers or like someone who, you know what mean? um As far as the suicide stuff goes, the families insist the men were happy, stable, and had no reason to enter the water.
00:16:53
Speaker
i think every gay guy probably has the capacity for suicide within him. um but Yeah, I would agree. yeah that also like um And also like, I don't know, people are always people always seem happy before they kill themselves too.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I get what they're saying. I'm just like, I do think being gay in general is a little bit of like a mental health strike. Whether you think that's from being gay or from like society at large. I would agree. For sure. me Being homophobic and it's just, yeah, whatever. It's so it's a harder life. It's a harder life. um And gay guys die earlier too in general. Smoking, drugs, everything. Vicky's literally taking a hit of nicotine right now.
00:17:38
Speaker
um Okay. So several locations where bodies are found are poorly lit, hard to access, or access are like not obvious places someone would accidentally fall in. So it wasn't like it was near the bridge or like near something where, like you know. But again, I'm like a little bit of a grain of salt because it's possible that, again, these guys were going somewhere to hook up.
00:18:03
Speaker
Okay, and then I'll get to this later. i want to like stick with the Austin timeline before I go to this, but there are like kind of similar patterns in Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, and New York City where gay men were found drowned after nights out.
00:18:17
Speaker
um So there is kind of this like broader theory. um Here's what the theories are. So there's... drug They think some of the... Because not all of these guys got, like, real autopsies either, which is kind of weird. And that's why I'm going to talk about the program to kill part later. But, like, they didn't necessarily do toxicology screens on all these guys. um So there's the drugging theory. There's the, there's the like, grinder, scruff, Tinder, serial killer theory. Like, this person's using the apps. And then there's this idea that, like, maybe the person lures them out there and then just, like, pushes them into the water.
00:18:52
Speaker
um Yeah. So, law enforcement says that it is possible that you could be killed by pushing even with no visible trauma. You could be killed while unconscious, and it is possible someone could murder you without any visible signs of injur and ah injury. these are like These are real possibilities.
00:19:21
Speaker
yeah So now it's like kind of like I think it's sort of died down at this point, but this did cause a big stress kind of in the gay community in Austin and like gay people and in general started like walking in groups, avoiding that area and sharing locations on their phones. In general, I would just say Twinkies.
00:19:45
Speaker
None of those are a bad idea if you're out for a party night like to like stick with your crew, share your love. I just think that these are sort of standard things. I didn't have that mobility when I was this age. you know um i didn't have like a phone that could share my location. But if I was going out now, I would do that. Why not?
00:20:04
Speaker
Someone can always find where you are. you know um Okay. go over the victims. So let's go over the victims so Here are the victims. Here's the timeline. So in 2022, there was Ricky Parks. He was recovered July 14th, and it was ruled accidental.
00:20:24
Speaker
Christopher Gutierrez recovered December 10th. um No foul play. Case closed. Joshua Moreno was found December 19th, so only nine days later.
00:20:35
Speaker
um a man was charged with his murder... ah But it wasn't considered a mystery case. But I guess they didn't think that guy did did any of these other ones. Kyle Orton, only another eight days later, December 28th, he's found no foul play, case closed. I think part of the reason these like really struck people is they're so close together, because now we're only two months later on February 13th, another accidental drowning, a guy named Jason John.
00:21:06
Speaker
ah This name is, a lot of these names are very gay. Clifton Axstill, only another three weeks after that. ah the The medical examiner couldn't determine cause of death.
00:21:19
Speaker
um Jonathan Honey, 33, April 1st, where again, we're less than three or less we're like three weeks after the last one. That was ruled an accidental drowning. Christopher Hayes Clark found April twenty third um There was one woman, Maga de Guile, found June 27, 2023.
00:21:38
Speaker
And then 2024, there was an unidentified woman and another body recovered ah in the same area. But I guess they couldn't identify those bodies. So just to be clear, too, like the order in which these people were found doesn't mean that's the order in which they went into the water.
00:21:56
Speaker
Yeah. That's going to be important to remember. Do they like move around in the water when you're in there, are you kind of like staying still? I don't really know how river is. Well, as you saw, it's like attached to like the river, sort of. So it's like the lake is like a part of the river that gets really fat, but it's like the water... There is flow. There's water flow. i don't know. The thing that kind of...
00:22:22
Speaker
i keep everything that you're sort of saying, like, it all it all sounds so similar to the the, like, urban legend that we have here of, like, the Manchester pusher. Like, it's it's all, like,
00:22:35
Speaker
um, like deaths really close together, like the police ruling it a suicide. And it kind of, I don't know whether it kind of like, it almost like it's so similar that it almost like supports the police's claim that like, there's nothing so suspicious because this is obviously happening in lots of cities. So like in Manchester, I think between like 2008 and 2016, there were like people that died like this.
00:23:02
Speaker
And I sort of think, well, I don't know if it's happening in such large numbers like here, then it's bound to be happening in other cities that have got a sort of similar layout where you've got like bars against the river. But at the same time, I'm sort of like, maybe there's like a network of like serial killers and they're all doing it I don't know. It's crazy, but carry on.
00:23:25
Speaker
I feel like we have such an unprofessional podcast. Like I can never figure out how to like turn my fucking... Your phone goes up every episode. It's so funny. I don't even bother to mute it. I don't even know how to turn it off. Whatever. i think it's just like the volume.
00:23:40
Speaker
So yeah, it does it does definitely support like either way, right? Because it's like, on the one hand, you could say these these killings are so common that it's like all it could be is...
00:23:54
Speaker
these accidents, or you could argue that like this is just a really easy way to kill people and there is as some sort of grand conspiracy. um So yeah, so they the Austin PD did not really ignore this, or at least they they pretend they claimed not to. they did ah They collaborated with Texas State University, which is in San Marcos, which is close by.
00:24:18
Speaker
um they looked at 189 drowning cases. and they picked 54 that I guess they thought could fit a pattern and they examined them in closer detail and there was no clustering patterns.
00:24:31
Speaker
ah They were all consistent with alcohol alcohol ah induced drownings. um Yeah.
00:24:42
Speaker
So it's just kind of... but I do feel like that's a cop out though because like, I don't know. If you like hypothetically say this guy is real and there is like a real serial killer and he is targeting people that are extremely drunk, then like, yeah, they're gonna see the same thing every time when they like autopsy these bodies. They're all gonna be super drunk. And i don't know, like the the question isn't like how did they die in the war? It's how did they get into the war in the first place? And like, there isn't really a way that you can
00:25:19
Speaker
tell all that there's no like, there's no like forensic analysis that you can do to figure out like how somebody got in the war, unless they've got like, i don't know, like push marks on them from being pushed, but I don't think that's a thing. Like, i don't think, I don't think they would have that. I mean, no, like, as i've no so how do they fucking know? They don't know. They're just speculating.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah. And I also think that like, Like, especially the idea that they would, like, go into the water on their own. It's just kind of... i mean, I do think drunk people do that.
00:25:52
Speaker
I have seen drunk people jump into all sorts of water in my life. Yeah, me too. I've seen drunk people set themselves on fire and jump into water. Yeah, but usually, what I was going to say about these, like, joke drunk things is usually it's, like, they're still with, like, the group of people. And they're doing yeah they're doing it for, like, an attention or, like, kind of a...
00:26:13
Speaker
like a whatever. So I, I'm just a little bit like, it's the, you don't usually walk off alone and jump it into the water. Like when I've witnessed, like I witnessed this even when I lived in Amsterdam, like when people would jump into the, people would actually jump into the canals and stuff when they were really drunk, but they were doing it like with, uh, you know, like their group of friends to be like, ha ha ha. And this is like, so this is a completely separate note, but is it like quite clean ish in like Austin?
00:26:44
Speaker
When Amsterdam, it's definitely not clean. That was disgusting. It's not here either. Our rivers are disgusting. like it's just not No, it's actually not. I actually looked that up specifically, I'm glad you asked because um I'm i'm like actually researched a little bit for this episode. Not as much as I should have, but I did. um No, it's actually not very clean. It's not considered a very clean river. There's a lot of like floating debris and stuff like that, which is actually part of the reason there are like warnings all along the river that say like, don't jump into this water because yeah you could get hurt because there is like floating pieces of like crap. You know what I mean? So if you hit like something, you get hurt.
00:27:28
Speaker
I'm really grossed out by that. Yeah, so it's not a clean river. I mean, I'm sure it's cleaner than, I hate to say it, like, no offense, but I'm sure it's cleaner than, like, New York or Manchester water. be Oh, I'm sure it's cleaner than here. our Our rivers are so disgusting. wow I mean, British rivers have been famously disgusting for, like, centuries. Okay, so let's go ahead and look at the, like...
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, so there's the smiley face conspiracy theory now.
Smiley Face Conspiracy and Serial Killer Networks
00:27:56
Speaker
So some people connect this to this broader, what they call smiley face killers. Okay, and these are mostly, well, these are everywhere.
00:28:05
Speaker
So
00:28:08
Speaker
it's national in the U.S. and maybe even international. Yeah. the FBI, 2008, publicly stated that they're... Okay, so the FBI is like, there's no evidence again. They do all that, okay? So, but anyway, here's what happens, basically, in all these cases. And I'm just going to read the cities and then tell you, like, kind of what happened. So Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston. Basically what happens is, periodic waves of social media claims about a serial killer. Local investigative reporting has covered the phenomenon and notes that cases are typically ruled accidental undetermined. And, like, kind of the, like...
00:28:42
Speaker
second part of it is that in all these cases, and there's lots of like online, if you want to have like a fun, chill Saturday, there's a lot of like online documentaries and stuff on YouTube about this, but they find these like smiley face graffiti, like near the, where like near where the person is. Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
A few things. One, um, smiley face graffiti also very common. Yeah. k yeah And two like, you know, it's just, yeah. So there's some, like, stuff against that. But also, um and hold on, I want to make sure I get this guy's name right.
00:29:27
Speaker
There is also some, like, really compelling... like stuff of, ah like there are some so very specific stories that make it seem like something really bizarre is happening and that these people maybe are um like almost being stalked. So like Dakota lee jane Leo James was a man who died in ah Pittsburgh.
00:29:58
Speaker
And I was just, I mean, this is just one example. Cause like a lot of the families are like very against this whole, ah like accidental killing thing. But anyway, like this kind of creeped me out to be honest. Like, um, his story was like, he called his friend.
00:30:18
Speaker
And again, this reminded me of like my night. So I was like, this is this is scary. He called his friend, this woman who wasn't out with him. he was said he was very drunk and cold and confused and like didn't know where he was or like who he was with.
00:30:33
Speaker
And she drives and drives and drives. And like eventually she finds him like stumbling out of this hotel and he gets in the car. like He's okay. But then like very shortly after that, um he disappears again.
00:30:46
Speaker
The same day or like? No, like a couple like a couple days later. Okay. And some of what you see online does have the theory that these people are like stalked in some way.
00:30:58
Speaker
um And so when he disappears, he's not found for 40 days. um And when they recover his body in the river in Pittsburgh, not found 40 it's like extremely intact. Like it does. It's not as if it had been in the water for like 40 days. Like generally a body that's been in the water for 40 days is going to be pretty gnarly. Yeah. They grow like big and bloated and gross. It like wasn't like that. It was like, it looked like he had just like gone into the water and There was also some other like weird circumstantial evidence. like
00:31:32
Speaker
After he disappeared, a couple days after his credit card was used, so it was like he didn't necessarily die the day he was disappeared. Although, of course, there's again the possibility that like whoever was with him used the credit card, potentially.
00:31:47
Speaker
um But that means someone was with him, right? like That like kind of confirms that ah part of the story. um and Yeah, so there's like a few situations like that where it's just like ah like what exactly happened. That's like a very weird series of events to like have this night. You're very scared.
00:32:10
Speaker
your You call your friend. you have a very confusing... This woman had a very confusing encounter with him trying to figure out... you know, like what was wrong. And then only a couple days later, he disappears, but it takes 40 days to find his body and his body does not appear like it has been in the water for that long. So there's like, there are some stories like that. Now, when you go online and you start clicking through Reddit, um you will find some really, really, really, really like crazy stories. Um, so, I mean, take it with a grain of salt, but, like, there's definitely people who think that, like, these are, um...
00:32:50
Speaker
supernatural beings. These are sort of like men in black type encounters. Like there's there's people who talk about like having, um you know, people visit their work shortly before like they' just they disappeared. I mean, some of these people are obviously crazy. if you Google gang stalking, you can look at this like particular type of psychocus psychosis where someone believes they're being stalked by like large groups of people. But I also am sometimes like,
00:33:20
Speaker
When read about gang stalking and stuff like that, like, yes, it seems like a crazy person, but I'm also like, if there was group of people who wanted to make someone crazy, wouldn't this be a really good way to do it? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, and to make them seem crazy because it's like you basically stalk them in a way where they know they're being stalked, but they can't prove it to anyone. It's like the classic gaslighting thing. Yeah. Okay. So that's kind of an overview of the case. And then I wanted to talk about, you have any questions before I start talking about Program to Kill and give you So like these smiley face killers, is it mostly guys as well? All guys. Or it like a mix?
00:34:00
Speaker
Okay. Okay. All men, all white men, all gay or bisexual are known to go out in gay areas or whatever. whatever were and these ah And this is in like a bunch of different cities. It's not just one city, right?
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, I only did research on like the cities in the U.S. s But yeah, it's like a U.S. conspiracy theory. wonder, like...
00:34:24
Speaker
I don't know, it's creepy. like i just I wonder whether it would... I don't think it's realistic to think that like if if this serial killer is real, I don't think it would be like one person.
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah, no. I mean, the idea, the definitely like the claim is that it's like a gang. of it's Like a gang of people. Not a gang, but like a group of people who are doing this. Okay, that makes more sense. But what I'm about to share with you is that whether or not... Okay, can I make a drink before you start on this? Because I feel like a new one. Okay, one sec.
00:35:00
Speaker
I'm drinking such weird combos because I've like only got leftover Christmas booze. I'm drinking vanilla-flavored vodka with like um Diet Coke with lime, which is an interesting combo.
00:35:14
Speaker
One second. But it's fine. I almost had a glass of champagne. i was like, could I have a glass of champagne on the pod? I was like, no, don't do that. Okay.
00:35:25
Speaker
All right, let's get back to it. So you have your drink. What drinking again? Tell me again. um' I'm drinking vanilla vodka and Diet Coke with lime.
00:35:37
Speaker
Dilla vodka, Dilla wine. Interesting mix. It's fine. It's not too I like the second you leave, I get like immediately absorbed into my phone again. like I have a serious problem. um And I'm doing a lot today. I'm making a pot roast.
00:35:51
Speaker
Wow. I don't really understand what pot roast is. Maybe you can explain this briefly. I'm sure they have it in Britain and they just call it something else. It's basically like, you well, you can do it in the oven. But you can also do it in like a slow cooker where you just put them you put like a chuck roast into like the slow cooker. What's this cho what a chuck roast?
00:36:09
Speaker
It's like not really generally a good cut of meat, but you like put it in and it cooks for so long, like seven or eight hours, that it like gets really like tender and like falls apart. Okay. I think we would just call that like a stew.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah. I guess it's like similar to like a beef stew. Anyway, in America, they call it a pot roast. Clearly. Right. Carry on. Okay, so Program to Kill. So here's the here's why I wanted to bring this up finally and talk about it on the show. And I feel like just reading about this again got me into, like, I might reread the book.
00:36:43
Speaker
But basically... um Whether or not there is a serial killer or an organized group of serial killers, it doesn't mean that there's not somebody trying to instill fear by ah kind of, what is it called? Like...
00:37:03
Speaker
instigating a social media panic. And that's what I'm going to talk about now. So David McGowan wrote this book called Program to Kill. And he's like a conspiracy theorist. not going to like, it's what he's known as.
00:37:18
Speaker
um And if you Google him, you'll probably find a lot of like, like I bet, let me just look, I bet his Wikipedia page has like immediately, like at the very top it's like debunked or You know what I mean? um If they even like let him have a Wikipedia page, which is like possible they don't. and um Well, you can buy it you can buy his book on Amazon in the UK. I'm just looking now. Yeah, you can buy his book on Amazon, but I just think it's funny because like he's so kind of considered, yeah, like he does not have a Wikipedia page. Like he's considered fringe enough that they just like
00:37:56
Speaker
Yeah, they sort of just keep him the next time. Keep him with arms like... Yeah.
00:38:05
Speaker
I think he was British, too. Let me make sure before I mess this up. Oh, I love that for him. it's only available in paperback. God, he's so online.
00:38:15
Speaker
he's so edited on online It's like it's like hard to even like find stuff about He looks like a serial killer. like I'm just looking at a picture of him now.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah, he's just so edited online. It's like really funny. Okay, whatever. Let's talk about Program to Kill. stuff Okay. it's it's He's controversial, to say the least. So...
00:38:46
Speaker
so The core claim of Program to Kill is that most serial killers were not acting alone. They were part of organized networks connected to intelligence agencies, military programs, and elite trafficking rings.
00:38:59
Speaker
um He argues that serial killers are often mind-controlled assets, blackmail operatives, or expendable fall guys. And yeah, that's like his...
00:39:10
Speaker
essential core claim. so basically the argument he makes is that there's a reason that during that right after the Vietnam there's a massive um uptick in serial killers. So like in the US, there was like you know, very rare instances, like before the 70s, basically, maybe even the 60s, like starting with like Charles Manson, um it wasn't very common, right? Like that we had like Jack the Ripper famously, we had like Elizabeth Bathory, who was like like Hungarian, we should do an episode on her, by the way, who was like the Hungarian, ah whatever, a woman who killed like 100 girls and bathed in their blood, etc. I think even more than that, but yeah.
00:39:59
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, there's just been like a lot that that's a good episode for us but anyway there's been a lot of... um like Anyway, massive uptick in the United States in particular, starting in the late 60s, arguably starting with Charles Manson.
00:40:17
Speaker
And Charles Manson is pointed to by a lot of conspiracy theorists as the beginning of kind of a new era in American ah counterintelligence sort of terror projects. And I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but this has been kind of mainstreamed. Like, you can watch on Netflix right now the chaos documentary about Charles Manson, and there is, like,
00:40:44
Speaker
ah huge evidence that he was like connected to, um kind of like military experimentation programs and things like that. Like there's, it's like, it's, ah it's actually like kind of been mainstreamed that Manson was not just this like crazy guy that came out of nowhere that he like really did learn the techniques that he used to convince those kids to kill those people. Like he really did use, he really did, uh, you know, like learn this from like being institutionalized and stuff. So,
00:41:14
Speaker
so he So during the Vietnam War, which was still going on when all this starts in the U.S., is there was this um program called the Phoenix Program. ah It was a CIA program. This is, like, very mainstream and known. It's, like, not even...
00:41:33
Speaker
like This isn't even a conspiracy. This is like a real thing. um And the CIA was ah basically trying to destroy the Viet Cong, which was like the opposing force the Vietnam War, using assassination, torture, capture, interrogation.
00:41:50
Speaker
um And it was basically trying to... like destroy like the you know opposition in vietnam it actually killed 80 at least this is like official military records 81 000 people and um or and or sorry neutralized 81 000 people and killed 26 000 i don't know what the word wait wait wait so like is that people who were involved in the experiment or people that they were targeting with the
00:42:22
Speaker
No, this is in Vietnam. They're just targeting these people. I'm getting to the experience. Okay. But part of what they did was like, it was supposed to kind of like terrify people who might want to side with the Viet Cong, right? So it's like they would like hang bodies of like these dissidents and tree... The U.S. like did do this like as part of the war. They would like hang bodies of these like dissidents and trees, like chop them up, like really just like freak people the fuck out. So it's like yeah if you're thinking of joining the like opposing forces, like you're going to be... You're fucked, right?
00:43:00
Speaker
um And at the same time... Pretty much in the U.S. I want to look at the exact... dates. but like in the you ok know A little bit earlier, but it actually went... It was going on at the same time, but it started earlier. Project MKUltra is going on in the US. s It starts in 1953, and it doesn't stop until 1973. So that actually overlaps with the Project Phoenix time.
00:43:27
Speaker
um And and this is like this is like the mind control stuff. Yeah, and this isn't even like considered again ah fake or anything like that. It's just like...
00:43:39
Speaker
Yeah, MKUltra was basically, they were trying to use LSD to see if they could like control people um psychologically. And again, this is all like out in the open. It's not even considered fake.
00:43:58
Speaker
And that's what Charles Manson did. um so like Charles Manson would like give his followers like huge doses of LSD and only small doses of LSD himself in order to sort of like have control over them.
00:44:13
Speaker
So the program, again, this is like all, like this did happen. um But yeah, the program like tried to use disassociation, trauma-induced personality splitting, hypnosis, and behavior control to ah make people do things. So basically...
00:44:33
Speaker
He examines a bunch of different ah serial killers and he like comes up with these theories for why they were basically 100, he believes 100% part of like mass rings. And the goal of this, if you're wondering like why even do all this, the goal of this was to like kind of terrify the American public, right? To create sort of a docile...
00:45:02
Speaker
population. um So for Ted Bundy, like there's a lot of evidence he was protected by judges, police, and politicians. He obviously was ah escaped repeatedly.
00:45:14
Speaker
john Wayne Gacy has long been, they He did have connections to the Democratic Party and he's long been suspected of having been part of a national child sex trafficking ring. Yeah, we talked about that a little bit. yeah long time but We've also talked about Dahmer and Dean Correll.
00:45:35
Speaker
Both of them are considered to have had accomplices and ran sex trafficking rings. and David Berkowitz, the son of Sam. and This also has become pretty mainstream.
00:45:48
Speaker
probably didn't act alone, and probably was part of the cult of the Process Church. um And ah he, like...
00:46:01
Speaker
Yeah, he basically, there's evidence he was involved in occult activities and things like that. And you can watch, again, right on Netflix, there's mainstream documentary about how David Berkowitz was almost certainly involved in some sort of cult. So...
00:46:18
Speaker
called so
00:46:23
Speaker
that is his basic thesis, I think, in a nutshell. It's interesting because I think even though, like, the, um, even though this guy, like, in particular is, like, considered sort of controversial, like, beyond the pale and, like, conspiracy theorist, I think, like, that, like, ideas of this,
00:46:44
Speaker
sort of narrative have like definitely like permeated into the culture. Like I recently watched, um, the, like the, the clown show on Netflix and basically like, it wasn't very good by the way, don't watch it. But the, the basic whole premise of that series, it's like set in the 1960s. Um, is that like the,
00:47:05
Speaker
the American government are trying to like capture the entity from like the the clown movies to sort of scare the public into submission. and so there's There are echoes of that kind of like narrative like fed into sort of the um the like fiction that we
Media, Conspiracy Theories, and Government Control
00:47:27
Speaker
watch. like It's the same with like Stranger Things. That like sort of like has a lot of MKUltra-type echoes in the storylines and stuff.
00:47:35
Speaker
Yeah, and that actually, he he talks about that um in the book. um Both him and other conspiracy theorists talk about this idea that's called revelation of the method, where like part part of the reason, part of the way this works is that, like yeah, I mean, they use like actual, and again, you have to like I'm not saying you have to believe any of this, but they use like actual,
00:48:00
Speaker
media to, like, basically, like, say what they're doing. yeah And that's part of, like, the whole idea to two um but So, yeah, there's tons of documentary of, like, trauma-based mind control theory. Like, there's lots of people who were in the MKUltra program who've spoken out.
00:48:21
Speaker
The government doesn't even deny it anymore. They just says it um stopped doing it. That's all they say. they don't really they don't really deny it. um Oh, and the one part... But then we don't really get, like...
00:48:35
Speaker
We don't really get that many serial killers now, though do we so Well, that's why I was talking about... Oh, yeah. One more I wanted to mention. You could look up the Franklin scandal. you should People should Google that if they want to.
00:48:47
Speaker
But anyway, so yeah, we don't get a lot of serial killers now, but that's why I was like... But we do get other things, which I think is like... ah important to remember. We do get a ton of mass shootings now.
00:49:00
Speaker
So you could argue that, like, they've just changed the kind of fear tactic, right? ah Like, now, instead of radicalizing people to become serial killers, they radicalize people to commit mass shootings. um And I also, this is why I wanted to bring it up into the, uh,
00:49:26
Speaker
like Like, I wanted to bring it up into the Austin, Rainy Street murders, Smiley Face Killers thing, because it's like, even if these people are... um
00:49:43
Speaker
not being murdered by a serial killer, it doesn't mean that there isn't like someone somewhere who like is purposely fomenting the fear. So like it ah it doesn't mean that there's not people on social media, some who might be organized, some who might just be randoms, but who like really want to like kind of foment this fear.
00:50:03
Speaker
um So that's like possible. ChatGPT, if you want to hear what they said about... McGowan. They say McGowan was right about government human experimentation, elite abuse rings existing, and institutional cover-ups.
00:50:17
Speaker
But he likely overextends when he suggests nearly all serial killers were intelligent assets. I would of, i was kind of and not to agree with AI because we hate AI, but i kind of I kind of think that's probably true. like I do think that serial killers,
00:50:35
Speaker
um I do think serial killers exist like separate from this. And I do think there are other explanations for why there weren't so many sort of publicized, I guess, between sort of Jack the Ripper days and like the 1960s, 1970s, because I think they, I don't know, like we only really know about, we only really know about serial killers when that when they're getting caught.
00:51:05
Speaker
or if they get caught. And the way in terms of policing and stuff is done since the 70s, it's improved a lot in terms of the ability to catch killers and stuff. So I think it does make sense that it does make sense that therere that we suddenly have this, like, explosion of serial killers. I don't necessarily think it means that there's more. I think it just means that, like, the police are, like, better at catching them.
00:51:37
Speaker
and Yeah, and it also makes sense that, like, I mean, again, I want to, like, i want to play both sides of this. Like, it also makes sense that, you know... i Like, it also makes sense that, like, let's say technology got good enough that detection was more possible in the 70s, and then technology got even better to where they just catch people who would become serial killers much sooner.
00:52:05
Speaker
um Because now it's like, you know, there's so much CCTV and stuff. It's like they probably do catch someone who would be a potential serial killer. like significant Before they've like killed ton people. Right. So it kind of makes sense if you think about the arc of technology that like around the 60s, 70s, technology got good enough to like detect and make connections between serial killers, right? Right.
00:52:31
Speaker
And then by like the 2000s, when we see this drop off in serial killers, it's like technology got good enough that like, if you commit one crime or two crimes, you're probably kind of like, I don't know whether like, I'm trying to think how to word what I mean, but like,
00:52:49
Speaker
There's a kind of like romance to the idea of a serial killer that this kind of like destroys if you believe in it too much. And I think there's like, I think I probably have ah a reluctance to believe in it because the idea of like, um, just individuals who are like pure evil is more like, like, we like not romantic in the, I know what mean. Like, I don't know. It's,
00:53:15
Speaker
I don't like the idea of them like all coming from this like one sort of like go like sterile like government program. It takes something away ah of the the appeal of like being interested in serial killers, I think, if you think of it that way. I don't know.
00:53:33
Speaker
does that make get any sense? Yeah, no, I mean, it makes 100% sense. um And there is something romantic, and and we're not talking like in the the sense of like you know romance, as in like, ah we're talking about like romantic in the sense the word is used. Like the literary sense. You don't want to fuck the serial killers, although there are a lot of girls out there who do fuck. Yeah, but it's like we're talking about in the literary sense because it is sort of this like grand narrative, right? It's like this person who it's almost like this. Like if you think of a serial killer in that way, it's almost like the way we think of like a great artist or something, right? It's like they're like these exceptional human beings, but instead of using their exceptional like skills skills,
00:54:19
Speaker
intelligence or whatever for like creative purposes they use it for like destructive purpose purposes instead so it's kind of just like foil to like the great the great man or the great woman or the great artist thing it's like they are this like kind of yin to the whatever yang to the yin of those people and they use and they're like these this like destructive element so it's kind of shows that like how talent or genius or whatever can be like corrupted and like yeah i mean i i think that that is a more interesting idea than just like the government's doing it to terrify people
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah. Also like, I don't know, like what do you think the benefit is for the government of like terrifying Well, I mean, there's obvious I mean like that's the thing. It's like, there's obvious benefits, right? Because it's like, if you want to eventually build, like if the, like, let's say like the security state, the CIA, NSA, the FBI, they want to, so like, let's say the goal, they think the best way to like run the country is for there to be like a domestic, um,
00:55:28
Speaker
kind of like military militarized force that's able to kind of enact control on the population and if you convince people that there's these like terrible people out there who are going to like kill their kids and like so yeah like then you kind of like you get this like mass public buy-in to like the idea that you like need a domestic militarized force to like combat that I guess that is how the government do everything. Yeah. Like, I don't know, thinking about it now, like, i mean, over here the minute, like, the current thing is, like, this, like, online safety bill that they've, like, passed into law that they're using to, like, under the guise of, like,
00:56:13
Speaker
protecting children from um online pornography. They're basically like censoring the internet for everybody and like restricting everybody's sort of access to like free speech and stuff. And and and the same with, like sort of um I guess, like when we've experienced um Islamic terrorism and stuff over here, they always use that as an excuse to implement these new sort of ah security procedures that never really go away. like they're They're always sort of permanent, even though they say like, oh, it's just to keep you safe. um So yeah, I don't know. It's not beyond the government to
00:56:56
Speaker
to want to manipulate the public in that way. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And it like creates this kind of like mass buy-in. Like if you, can if you convince people there's like a real, um threat, you know?
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah. Scary. I, I hate the government. Like, not just in general, like, I don't know, like, I feel like the less I think about them, the better. But I am like curious to read this book now. I probably will pick it up.
00:57:24
Speaker
Okay, I will trigger warning you and all the listeners. It's very it's very graphic. um Is it long or no? No, it's not long. It's like maybe like 200 pages tops. What have you been reading in general at the minute? Like, are you reading anything interesting?
00:57:39
Speaker
I'm reading the Jeanette McCarty book. called half his age, which is about- She's the, she's the, um, she's the, like with my mom, I'm glad my mom's dead lady. What's the TV show she was on with that other girl?
00:57:53
Speaker
She was on something on Nickelodeon, which was cloth you like- Nickelodeon. I Carly, I Carly. Yeah. But it was like a little below our, like, I feel like I Carly was a little after our childhood, right? A little bit? Yeah, it was a little bit. I have seen a few episodes, but I wasn't like i wasn't like hooked in. Because the only other show from that time period, it was sort of a similar time to like Hannah Montana.
00:58:17
Speaker
And i was definitely too old for Hannah Montana, but i still watched Yeah, this is really going to date me, but it started literally September 8th, 2007, which was probably my literal first day of college, September 2007. So, i yeah, I was a little too old for it.
00:58:36
Speaker
No, I've been reading... Where is that? Have you heard of this book called, like, Strange Houses? I have. I've read part of that. I got bored. Oh, okay. I see. I've, like, I've read, like, the whole thing in, like, two days. um I really liked it. It's not, like, it's not the best written thing in the world, but, like, it's kind of like a mix between, ah um like, a puzzle and a novel. um It's basically about these, like...
00:59:03
Speaker
people who are murdering these people in these strange houses and you can kind of like analyze the floor plans and stuff as you're reading. So, yeah, but, but no, I've been, I've been enjoying it. I'm trying to read more. We should do another book soon.
00:59:17
Speaker
Um, all right, let's call it Twinkies. We'll see you soon. Okay. Bye.