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The Smiley Face Killers
33 Plays5 years ago
This week Josh and M discuss the curious case of the Smiley Face Killers, a purported gang operating in the U.S. who predate on young men, leaving their drowned bodies near to distinctive graffiti. What do our conspirologists think of the claim there not only exists a criminal conspiracy, but also a cover-up of that conspiracy? Is this the episode which will turn Josh's frown upside down?
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Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
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Transcript
Introduction and Auckland Weather
00:00:09
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the podcast as Guide to Conspiracy. I am Josh Edison. Sitting next to me is Dr. Eddender, the two of us sweltering away in a completely closed and, and, uh, the curtain Auckland room, because, because we care, basically, we care about giving you the best experience possible, which means, which means used infections and our crutches. Yes. So, so.
00:00:45
Speaker
Shutting things off for improved sound quality, although of course that means that our video watchers now have to put up with sweat glistening on our foreheads, although maybe they're into that.
00:00:54
Speaker
They're into everything, Joshua. That's what I've learnt from our Patreon page.
Dr. Denton's 9-11 Conspiracy Clash
00:00:57
Speaker
You'll take any filth and depravity that we will level against you. Speaking of filth and depravity, tell me, Dr. Dentist, have you alienated any pop-punk icons lately? Why, yes, I have! Jazz Coleman of Killing Joke is now my immortal enemy, all because I refuse to endorse a 9-11 conspiracy theory of his on an interview for Marty Duda's The 13th Floor. Josh?
00:01:23
Speaker
You've listened to the interview. I've listened to the interview. I don't re-listen to things or re-watch things I'm involved in. I very much would not re-listen to this one. But I mean, I just, as a general policy, I don't. You have experienced the experience I had by proxy. Tell the listeners or viewers about my interview with Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke, A.T. Seminole Band. Yes. Yes, it's a band about Seminoles. So I said pop about them. There's nothing pop about them, anyway.
00:01:51
Speaker
So if you go to, is it 13thfloor.co.nz, or the 13th? 13thfloor.co.nz, you can hear this interview. Last about 20 minutes. It felt more like 40 years, but that's another battery.
00:02:06
Speaker
I'd say go and check it out for yourself. I really don't know if I can recommend that though. I mean, the long and the short of it is Marty Duda gets the two of you in a room. Em gives his usual spiel that listens to the podcast, sort of heard about your general sort of approach towards conspiracy theories and so on. Jazz Coleman starts going on about 9-11 conspiracy theories. Em
00:02:30
Speaker
gets half a sentence into suggesting that there are multiple theories to account for 9-11 and Jazz immediately goes off at him and pretty much doesn't stop the entire time. Until such time he says he'll either punch me or walk out and he walks out. Yes, yes, I believe his last words were the only other option is violence.
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think, yes. So, classy, fallow jazz coffee. And I have to say, you have the patience of a saint. I don't know if this is just years of academia has taught you to deal with argumentation in slightly fraught circumstances. I mean, to be perfectly blunt, I would have told him to fuck off quite early on in that, I think.
00:03:12
Speaker
Well, I mean, this is... And then he probably would have hit me, so I think you're probably going to... Yeah, so actually, my patience here was rewarded by a lack of physical violence. But in part, it's because, as someone who studies conspiracy theory, and says we have to listen to people who espouse conspiracy theories to understand what it is they're claiming, how their arguments work, and what kind of evidence they're using, I like to listen to people as they present their conspiracy theories.
00:03:41
Speaker
Now, unfortunately, in this case, my listening to it also came with a barrage of personal abuse against myself, including lines like, my books have been paid for by the establishment. And let me note, dear listeners and the occasional viewer, Jazz Coleman goes to Russia from every so often to do work with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. And I believe he is picked up from the airport by a diplomatic car.
00:04:09
Speaker
So I ask you, who's actually working for the establishment? Is it me, the unemployed philosopher who has to gig from gig to gig? That makes sense. This is the very, very rich 80s pop star who gets picked up, allegedly, in a diplomatic car. Who's the real establishment shell? It's not actually me. No, it's not actually me. I only found out about this after the interview had ended, otherwise I probably would have said something at the time.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yes. Anyway, I found it not quite physically painful, but definitely emotionally painful to listen to. And it put me in a bad mood for several days afterwards, quite frankly. But if you feel like a fairly heated bit of debate in the conspiracy sphere. In which the 20 minutes is 19 minutes of jazz and one minute of me trying to get a word of it.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, go to 13thfloor.co.nz and have a listen. But anyway, anyway, let's go with this episode. And what an episode we have. We have updates. We don't actually have any retractions. We have updates and retractions. We have previously on, which we forgot about
Past Podcast Topics Recap
00:05:19
Speaker
last week. Well, we've got some previously.
00:05:21
Speaker
bumper crop of news. And we've got a rather exciting bit of content, which is all about being joyful whilst drowning people. Something like that, yes. So where should we go? Should we look back before we look? Yes, let's go back into the mist of time and find out what's been happening previously on the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy.
00:05:48
Speaker
previously on the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy.
00:05:55
Speaker
Right, so in the interest of not making all of our episodes go wildly over time, shall we just stick to the things that we were doing in the past that are kind of pertinent to what's happening now? Which is why in 2018 we talked this month about Jordan Peterson, and that's important because Jordan Peterson is going to be in this country come February of this year. Hooray. It's sold out. No, I don't doubt that.
00:06:24
Speaker
It's rather disturbing. It is a little bit, yes. But it's, I don't know, it seems that the choices for living your life, having something to live your life by these days, are either... B&M Cell or B&Lopster. Or B&Lopster, yeah. It's a third option, I hadn't even thought about that.
00:06:42
Speaker
And of course back in 2017 we talked about the death of Kim Jong-nam. Now we actually needed a follow-up to find out what happened with the mysterious death of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia. And briefly, in the 12th of December last year, North Korean officials informally apologized to Vietnam for involving a Vietnamese woman in the assassination
00:07:07
Speaker
following Vietnam's demands for an official apology and a threat to several diplomatic ties, which is basically as close as you'll get to North Korea in saying, yeah, we kinda killed his brother. Now, jumping back a couple of years, this week, this time in 2015, we were talking about anti-Semitism, not a big surprise, it tends to come up in a lot of conspiracy theories, but in 2016, this week,
00:07:34
Speaker
this possibly very day, depending on exactly what we normally do it on a Thursday, so something like that. In 2016, was our episode on true crime documentaries, where we talked about serial underclosed and undisclosed, and making a murderer, and that is spookily coincidental because we know you're talking about more true crime today. So there you go. It all circles, swings and roundabouts. It all comes back to
00:07:58
Speaker
Murder? See, I was going to do some kind of, say, in the sun, going round and round. But no. No, I'm just going to stick with murder. Fair enough. So there you go. That's what we have been talking about this time in previous years. Let's talk about what we are going to talk about this time this year. But first, a few updates. And no retractions. None. Updates. And retractions.
00:08:28
Speaker
I suppose for proper irony, we should actually turn out that we do have some retractions, and then our first retraction would have to be retracting the announcement that there are no retractions. That would have been hilarious. It would have been, but it's not. And we thought to be. We should have saved that joke for next week. Maybe we should advertise it now. So we have two updates. Two updates. This
New Theories on MH370
00:08:46
Speaker
week. The first update is, of course, print your favourite of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. MH370, there is news, or at least
00:08:56
Speaker
There's a hypothesis, and that's the important part. Tell me, Josh, about acoustic gravity waves. I know nothing about acoustic gravity waves, to be quite honest. It's a new survey. Hang on, let me get the actual notes so I'm not talking completely out of my arse.
00:09:13
Speaker
There's a mathematician from Cardiff University in Wales who thinks he's calculated a new impact location. There's a theory that MH370 didn't go down where we originally thought it was. His argument for the new impact dope zone is based on acoustic waves.
00:09:31
Speaker
Indeed. So the theory here is maybe have an impact in the ocean. What you get are waves of sound or actually more properly energy being dispersed through the water, which can then be picked up by a variety of different scientific probes found all around the world. So if we can pinpoint the time MH370 hit the water,
00:09:54
Speaker
We can then backtrace from the waves emanating from that point to work out exactly where it hit and also the angle of descent. So this isn't a we found the location of MH370. This is more with the right kind of data set we should be able to pinpoint using a mathematical model where MH370 eventually settled.
00:10:21
Speaker
The article that we read this in has a diagram which I hadn't seen before showing that the approximate area that the search has taken over of the Indian Ocean and it's
00:10:34
Speaker
It's too small to hold up in front of the camera now, and certainly this will be nothing to the podcast listeners. But it's when you actually see the scale of oceans and what have you, the area that they've currently searched for image 370 is kind of a speck. Yeah, it's kind of tiny.
00:10:51
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's not, oceans are massive. I mean, that's the main thing. And any area, no matter how big it is, is probably going to be tiny unless you spent the next 100,000 years searching. Which we just don't
Mysterious Embassy Illnesses
00:11:07
Speaker
have time for. We don't, no. Now, now more Havana embassy wackiness. The Canadians at it now. Well, so people will be aware that we've covered this several times.
00:11:19
Speaker
variety of weird things happening in Havana around the American Embassy and now it seems the Canadian Embassy and that the Canadian Embassy has basically reduced its staff down to half because of mysterious sicknesses being suffered by diplomats at the Canadian Embassy in Havana. So previously we've talked about how the American Embassy claimed to be under sonic attack
00:11:46
Speaker
And then a few weeks ago, we talked about how that may have been cricket, or at least some of it might be explained by the sound of cricket. Now the Canadians have got in on the story. It's all rather exciting. Are the symptoms the same? Not at all. No. So, yeah, it's one wonders how at what point it's just sort of one of those things like the Bermuda Triangle when anytime something wacky happens there, it's like, oh, it's the curse of the Cuban embassy again or something like that.
00:12:15
Speaker
One has to assume that yes, by this particular point in time, as soon as any member of diplomatic staff in Havana gets sick, it's been blamed on some kind of strange sonic weapon. So there we go, those are our updates and no retraction. So I think we have no excuse therefore for not going straight into the content of this main episode. Indeed, with an exciting new chime. Please enjoy our new chime.
00:12:47
Speaker
So tell me Joshua, why do you frown so much? I don't know. I just do. It's just how my face goes. Is it because you haven't been entered into the most exciting gang of all time?
Exploring the Smiley Face Killers
00:12:59
Speaker
Well that could be part of it, yes. Because the gang that you're thinking of, I assume, is the gang that I'm thinking of, which is the gang that you're thinking of, which is the gang, the smiley face killers.
00:13:11
Speaker
Not to be confused with Ghost Faced Killer, who's a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. This is not anything to do with Wu-Tang Clan, unfortunately. Although much like the Wu-Tang Clan, it would appear the Smiley Faced Killers ain't nothing to fuck with. Nice musical reference. I miss our old musical references from the top of the show. They were grand.
00:13:32
Speaker
Now, we're being a little bit flip, really, but if this theory is correct, it involves the deaths of hundreds, potentially, of innocent young men. This is something, an article came out about it in the early part of this year, early January, at the Daily Beast, in reference to a documentary which, at the time we're recording, will have started viewing. I believe there is to be a six-part documentary about the smiley face killers on the oxygen network. Which I've never heard of before.
00:14:00
Speaker
No, so I don't know if it'll come to Netflix. Oxygen, I believe, these days, does mostly true crime stuff. So I don't know if other networks are going to be buying it. So if you hear of smiley face killers, the hunt for justice, it promises to be riveting viewing. But all we have to go on at the current time are a few summaries of
00:14:21
Speaker
documentary and the case, which has been around for a while now, though. So there are other sources. 2006, 2007, doesn't it? Indeed. So, to cut to the point, there are claims, claims made by Global Death Investigations, which are a team of retired detectives and private investigators. Also one of the best Marvel team-ups of all time. Global Death Investigation.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like it should be a superhero. It should well in their eyes. It's probably if they're right. It pretty much is They claim that in the US there exists a ring a network of serial killers who organize on the dark web to Murder young men who all fit roughly the same profile across a variety of Midwestern American states They've traced cases going back as far as the 1990s
00:15:12
Speaker
And they believe that they can show between 70 and 100 murders are connected to this ring. They believe there are another 250 cases which they think could be connected, but they are unable to prove yet. Now, Josh, tell me, how are they connecting these deaths? What are the pathologies of these poor unfortunate victims?
00:15:35
Speaker
Well, they seem to be tying together instances with a similar MO. In every case, the victim is an athletic attractive college age young man. More recently, more of them have been gay apparently, although that could just be the fact that in the late 90s gay men were more likely to be in the closet than they are these days. So possibly it's just that
00:16:03
Speaker
The mixture, the straight versus gay means nothing, and it's just that more guys are out these days. The emo is that these men will disappear, usually following a night out when they've been out drinking with friends or something, and then sometime, usually a period of weeks later, their bodies will be found in a nearby body of water, a lake or a river, something like that.
00:16:27
Speaker
And the reason why this gang has been referred to as the smiley face killers is that apparently one of the distinguishing features is that smiley face or other distinctive kinds of graffiti can be found on a nearby structure. In some cases apparently these men have been autopsied and GHB, the popular date rape drug, has been found in their system. Along with fentanyl.
00:16:52
Speaker
And they believe they have evidence of these men having possibly been sort of stalked and marked out beforehand. Should we talk about the Dakota James case?
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about exemplicators and then talk about the people behind the investigation. So one of the things is the official line on pretty much all of these debts is that they were accidental drownings. They were men who went out, got drunk and decided to
00:17:25
Speaker
either either relieve themselves into a nearby body of water and fall in or somehow or another drunkenly fall into a body of water and drown. But some of the cases they point to are a little more chilling. Now the article that I read speaks about the death in 2017 of a man called Dakota James and this I believe is the subject of the first episode of the documentary as well.
00:17:50
Speaker
So I believe it's a six episode documentary and it's one victim per episode. So there are six victims they're specialising in to show the existence of the smiley face killer gang and their victims. So the interesting thing about the Dakota James case is that while his eventual death would fit the pattern,
00:18:12
Speaker
Before that, his body was found in the early in 2017, in December of 2016. He'd been out drinking with friends, had a night out, and then a friend of his received a phone call from him sounding sort of distressed and disoriented, didn't know what he was, thought he was in trouble.
00:18:33
Speaker
So the friend was able to trace him thanks to his phone's GPS location. I think they had a sort of app that allows them to find out where each other were. She eventually, he was so disorientated that where he said he was in Pittsburgh turned out to be somewhere completely different, but she was able to find him from his GPS.
00:18:53
Speaker
and reckons that as she caught up with him, she saw him coming out of a hotel and heading straight for a black SUV, which had pulled up on the wrong side of the road right next to him. She got out of her car, called out to him, got him over, got him into her car and drove home. He was obviously, he was quite distressed. He didn't know what had gone on. He'd lost several hours, but didn't want to go into it any further, didn't want to be taken to hospital and didn't want to talk about it again. So, you know, they were thinking, you know, had someone slipped a Maruffi, who knows?
00:19:23
Speaker
The problem is, five weeks later, now into the start of 2017, he went out for another night out drinking and disappeared and was not seen again until 40 days later when his body was found in the Ohio River.
00:19:38
Speaker
So that earlier detail has led these people to believe that perhaps what we saw there was either the first attempt, which was thwarted by this helpful friend, but then they went back again suggesting that if their theories are correct, this person had been, they'd specifically picked this one guy to target, or
00:20:04
Speaker
that possibly what they saw was maybe just a dry run or a trial of some sort before they did it for real a few weeks later. So when you hear about a case like that, and again, this man's death so far has been ruled as an accidental drowning, but you hear the details of something like this, it starts to sound a lot more sinister. It does. So why smiley face? Well, that's the graffiti, the graffiti aspect. So there are
00:20:34
Speaker
Actually, this is where things start to get a little more shaky, I have to say. There were 11 smiley face symbols spray painted on the Roberto Clemente Bridge, which is the closest bridge to where James was found, and the official version is that's probably the bridge he fell off, which is how he got into the water.
00:20:56
Speaker
It was a good distance away, but the basic theory is that the first sort of major structure that is visible from where the body was found will always contain some sort of graffiti. The smiley face seems to be the main one, but they mention...
00:21:12
Speaker
12 other symbols and that it's often the smiley face in conjunction with other symbols. And sometimes the smiley face isn't there, but the other symbols are and so on. I have to say, this is the first instance where the case starts to look a little bit like they're reaching a bit far.
00:21:29
Speaker
Which we'll talk about later on in the segment, yeah. It becomes a lot less vague about the emo almost sort of starts to become and they're found somewhere near where they're found is a structure that has graffiti on it, like pretty much every structure in a modern city everywhere.
00:21:47
Speaker
That said though, in more case for it actually being a murder, supposedly his body was not decomposed enough to have been dead for 40 days because obviously he disappeared and his body was found 40 days later. Supposedly there wasn't 40 days worth of decomposition. Supposedly his PayPal account had been accessed in the days after he disappeared.
00:22:10
Speaker
a forensic pathologist who reviewed the photos of his autopsy saw what they claimed were ligature marks around his neck suggesting he'd been strangled beforehand. So I mean there is evidence for and against and as we say this is one of the exemplar cases, this is one of the ones that I think best shows their case but if they are correct there have been quite a few others. So what's the conspiracy angle here?
00:22:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, the conspiracy angle is that unlike the vast majority of serial killers, as far as we know, who tend to operate alone, this is an organised group of serial killers. This is a network literally conspiring to get away with murder. These detectives claim that the people organised on the dark web, they claim that they'd actually been given a URL to follow to a site where they were sort of
00:23:04
Speaker
voice chatting with someone wanting a password, the person insisted that they turn on their video camera so that these detectives could be seen and they said we're not going to do that and hung up straight away. Alright, so they're claiming we've had contact with members of this gang. They're claiming they've had, or at least with some sort of intermediary or precursor to getting into the gang.
00:23:26
Speaker
They believe that the group are sophisticated in the organisation. They believe they operate in cells. So you'll get a group of killers taking part in any one killing and the particular individuals will change from group to group to group. So each individual crime is always done by a different group of people, making it harder to connect any particular person to any particular murder.
00:23:52
Speaker
Right, so tell me about the people behind this investigation. Right, well, yes. Global Death Investigations, which I still think is a really weird name for a... Well, yeah. Also, is this a little bit like the World Series in the US? Well, yes, when they say Global Death.
00:24:09
Speaker
I did actually have a quick look at their website and they do appear to be just a group of private investigators. So you can employ their services for investigation on any case, but this happens to be the pet case that I guess they work on when they're not taking on other ones to pay the bills. But we have Kevin Gannon, a retired New York City police sergeant, Anthony Duarte, a retired NYPD policeman, Dr Lee Gilbertson,
00:24:33
Speaker
former detective with NYPD and a faculty member of the criminal justice faculty at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, also Mike Donovan, another retired NYPD detective. And I believe at least some of them got into this conspiracy theory, I guess, due to cases that I'd seen earlier on in their career.
00:24:59
Speaker
I don't think they mention the name of one particular one, but they do talk about one guy who sort of investigated the death of a man who'd supposedly been found on the river and when the steps he had to go through to actually get to the area where the guy was found, he sort of had to hop fences and go around things and all sorts of stuff and his immediate reaction was a drunk guy couldn't have stumbled through here and fall into this river. There has to be something dodgy going on here. But
00:25:26
Speaker
They're kind of alone so far. They are. So the thing which makes this story so fascinating is that, of course, we're dealing with what appear to be clusters of serial killers operating in various cities across the US.
00:25:43
Speaker
engaging in quite bespoke murders of some particular kind, which this global death investigation squad claims is all part of one large-scale conspiracy by serial killers to predate upon young, presumably gay men in the US
00:26:03
Speaker
And it turns out that other people who have investigated these crimes, they're just not convinced. No. So the La Crosse Police Department in Wisconsin has released an official statement claiming that the deaths that they've investigated were indeed accidental drownings of inebriated men and that no smiley face symbols are found in connection with any of their cases. So they're denying the claim that global death makes
00:26:32
Speaker
that these crimes aren't anyway linked. That's the local police. The Center for Homicide Research in Minnesota also have reviewed the theory, but more importantly, criminal profiler Pat Brown has called the theory to be ludicrous because it just doesn't fit what we know about serial killers.
00:26:54
Speaker
It looks more like a kind of fictional version of a serial killer conspiracy theory than it does the way that serial killers actually work in the real world.
00:27:09
Speaker
More than that, the FBI have also investigated. Now, we should say this documentary is coming out right now, but global death investigations have been investigating since the early 2000s and have been looking at cases before that. Now, they first went public with their beliefs back in 2008. They called a press conference and said they believed they had evidence. At the time, back in 2008, they had 40 cases, which they believed
00:27:34
Speaker
fit this profile. So I believe those 40 cases were what the Centre for Homicide Research investigated. The FBI also looked into those 40 cases. And as with the Centre for Homicide Research, they just plain disagreed. They thought that they were all accidental drownings.
00:27:53
Speaker
To date, obviously, that was 11 years ago now. So these guys, GDI, have been gathering more evidence. As we said at the beginning, they think they can prove considerably more than 40 cases are involved now. But I've completely forgotten what I was going to say now.
00:28:16
Speaker
Don't you hate it when that happens? It's what we should talk about, the graffiti. I was going to say something about the FBI, which was... Great podcasting. We're going to have to get this bit up. The FBI ruled the Mexico until they saying...
00:28:38
Speaker
The FBI has reviewed the information about these victims provided by two retired police detectives who have dubbed these incidents the Smiley Face Murders and interviewed an individual who provided information to the detectives. To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings. The FBI will continue to work with the local police in the affected areas to provide support as requested. Now that I've read that through, I remember where I was going with that, which was.
00:29:08
Speaker
that while the FBI has ruled those 40 deaths accidental drownings, these guys have looked into considerably more of these cases and have so far managed to overturn one, which is not none, but it's very little. There has been a single case, the 2002 death of a man called Chris Jenkins. That was changed to homicide back in 2006. And the police department there said, yes, we did actually get that wrong. It does look like he was murdered.
00:29:36
Speaker
So that was before they went public the first time though, and since then, from what I can see, they've not been able to change any minds. Yeah, they've had melting conspiracy theories, but no actual evidence persuade authorities that there's anything to their claim of conspiracy. So yes, the graffiti. The graffiti. Yeah, I mean...
00:29:57
Speaker
When I first read the original article, this was the bit where I started going, oh, this is not nearly as strong a case as they seem to think it is when they start talking. If it were a very specific symbol found regularly, specifically located in a specific place, then fair enough.
00:30:17
Speaker
a smiley face on a structure within about 10 miles of where a victim is generally found in conjunction with a bunch of other ones and sometimes it's just other ones and not the smiley face and the smiley face is not exactly an uncommon symbol possibly only second to the the good old-fashioned cock and balls when it comes to now the cock and balls that is a theory that we get attention so we yeah we have this issue here that
00:30:45
Speaker
The common denominator is a fairly common piece of graffiti found everywhere now, of course. If you were a group of serial killers trying to keep your work on the down low, why not work with a piece of graffiti that's going to be easily overlooked? So it's not the symbol itself which worries me, it's the within 10 miles of the body being found, because that's
00:31:12
Speaker
That's a fairly large search area, which suddenly means that you will find all kinds of graffiti there. Yeah, I mean, as they say, they try to make it, specify it to the point that it being the largest structure you can see from where the body was. Which is the structure most likely to have graffiti on it. Yes. And I don't know how much,
00:31:37
Speaker
whether this has been slightly overhyped, because the main thing they seem to lean on is the similarities between the nature of the victims and the nature in which they disappeared and were found dead.
00:31:52
Speaker
So I don't know if sort of people are jumping on it because the smiley face killers is a nice name rather than the abducting college age young men and dumping them in rivers gang. It doesn't really roll off the tongue. So I don't know if the graffiti side of things has been overplayed because it makes for a good sound bite. But either way that particular connection does seem just a little bit tenuous.
00:32:15
Speaker
Yes, and of course you've got situations where you have pathways that people are walking near bodies of water, people being in quite inebriated states, which means that some amount of accidents are actually going to occur when a person leans over a bridge or stumbles to one side and then topples, and of course being drunk then not being able to swim properly. There's a whole bunch of confounding factors here which
00:32:42
Speaker
kind of don't really point in any particular direction. And you can see why authorities are going. We think actually accident is the most likely hypothesis to explain the data set we've got. Yeah, so I mean, I don't know. It's that there are certainly things shaking with it. One thing I'd be interested to see would be sort of some some wider statistics like in a country of what they must be leading up to 400 million in the States these days, aren't they? In a country that big, just how many accidental drownings do you expect to see any
00:33:12
Speaker
Do these represent some sort of statistical blip or do they easily fit within the background noise of accidental deaths as you see them?
00:33:26
Speaker
Is there something real that's happening or is it people getting involved in that most human of past times, seeing patterns where patterns don't necessarily exist? It's a fascinating case. I want to try to track down the documentary. I think we should try to find some way of getting our hands upon it because I'd very much like to watch it. And if we do manage to, it'd be nice to report back on exactly what the whole thing says, whether it
00:33:52
Speaker
whether the documentary comes across as more convincing than the reading we've done, which I have to say is not 100% convincing. It's like it's a good story, I think that's the thing, but a story isn't a theory. Which reminds me, are you aware they're relaunching Unsolved Mysteries this year? I was not aware of that.
00:34:11
Speaker
So yes, it's going to be a Netflix show, I believe, and they're going to do, I think, 13 episodes. Each episode will focus on one particular story. I really hope they keep that music. Also, I really hope they bring Robert Stack back, even though he's been dead for quite some time. Well, that would be quite a feat. It would. But with modern technology, Robert Stack will live again.
00:34:35
Speaker
So, I mean, I don't want to poo-poo the smiley face killers entirely. One way or another- Especially since if you do, they will kill you. They will. Because one way or another, we're talking about the tragic deaths of innocent young men. And not just innocent young men, a lot of innocent young men.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yes, again, not so many that they possibly don't just blur into the unfortunate background noise of accidental deaths that you see in a populist country, but tragic nonetheless. But yeah, whether that tragedy has something much more ominous behind it or not is perhaps a little bit more questionable.
00:35:14
Speaker
So, I guess if anyone listening to this knows of where we viewers in New Zealand might be able to feast our eyes upon... Or if you are a smiley face killer and want to give us the inside goss about what you've been up to. Ideally without murdering us. You know how to get in contact with us.
00:35:35
Speaker
But until then I guess that's all we can say, so I guess we better get on with the news. Yes, let's update you on the news. Breaking breaking conspiracy theories in the news.
00:35:52
Speaker
And now, the news. Yes, at the time of recording, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not dead.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Conspiracy Theories
00:35:58
Speaker
And this has the QAnon community very confused. See, on the 21st of January, the Fox Network show, Fox & Friends, briefly displayed an image of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which featured the line 1933 to 2019, which somewhat implied that Ginsburg had just died. Later on in the show, one of the hosts issued a correction saying,
00:36:19
Speaker
A technical error in the control room triggered a graphic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a date on it. We don't want to make it seem anything other than there was a mistake. It was an accident. Much like that accent. QAnon believers, however, lost their shit. This was actually a coded message from someone within the conspiracy to bring down the Deep State telling the people that Trump would get to appoint yet another Supreme Court justice.
00:36:44
Speaker
or at least he should. The correction obviously meant that either the Dietz state were covering up Ginsburg's death or she was technically dead as she was on life support or something. Whatever the case, Ginsburg's lack of being dead is of serious concern to the QAnon community.
00:37:00
Speaker
Quite fascinating story actually, the way that a very simple mistake suddenly becomes root for a conspiracy theory about the deep state covering up people dying or not dying as the case may be. Not the first time it's happened obviously, I mean there have been plenty of cases when news agencies, news websites and so on obviously keep a bunch, keep, what's the word, not if it half.
00:37:23
Speaker
What do you call it when someone does it? Obituary. Yeah, where they publish the obituary by mistake. Or they have a link which suddenly reveals all the obituaries. Yeah, they have the obituaries on hand, obviously, because they want copy ready to go in the knowledge that unfortunately the human life is finite so far. So they know these silly reads are going to be dying at some stage and your one will pop up. So it seems like that's all that happened. It's not the first time, but
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, those... It must be getting hard on the QAnon people. I don't actually feel sorry for them, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should. Well, actually, we've got even more QAnon-related stories, but can't we? That brings us to QAnon and Donald Trump, frequent target of this podcast, but less so this year. Now, we did say we wouldn't do much Trump news this year, but QAnon, well, that's another matter.
00:38:12
Speaker
You might recall that there was a bit of a shutdown in the US earlier this year and Trump was threatening to keep the government partially closed until he got funding for his beautiful wall.
00:38:24
Speaker
Then, surprisingly, he backed out and allowed the government to be reopened for three weeks. That was about the same time his associate and frequent targeted discussion on this podcast, Roger Stone, was arrested as part of the ongoing Mueller investigation into possible collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russian government. QAnon.
00:38:46
Speaker
QAnon have been oddly silent about these events, mostly one suspects because they seem to indicate that maybe Trump isn't playing through their metronal chess after all. The storm, it seems, may not be coming.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah, QAnon. QAnon. QAnon. More like Q-non. QAnot. I like that. QAnon. Yeah, I mean it's... I think actually maybe we do need to start lumping the QAnon in with the Trump stuff as well as repetitive news that
00:39:23
Speaker
Well, see, my problem with QAnon is that... So my conspiracism alt on Twitter, where I mostly follow conspiracy theory accounts, it's just back to that QAnon, this QAnon, that, predictions about this, drawing the web about that, which is why it was fascinating on the day of the back down over the government shutdown, QAnon were oddly silent and suddenly other conspiracy theories have been talked about.
00:39:50
Speaker
because they were really going, we don't know how to process this information. This is not what we expected to happen. We thought we were getting the wall and Trump has blinked and Nancy Pelosi has been an alpha, according to people on the internet. She alphared that Donald Trump something crack. I don't even know what those words mean. No, I don't think anyone does anymore. So let's move on. Let's move on.
00:40:18
Speaker
to our last item this week. Last episode, we mentioned passing the crisis in Venezuela, where there are now two presidents who arguably both think the other justifiably are inauthentic. There's Nicolas Maduro, the chosen successor to Hugo Chárez, who was recently re-elected in an election that has all the hallmarks of vote tampering.
00:40:37
Speaker
And then there's Juan Guaido. And I'm going to interrupt you here because I wrote this bit and this is incorrect. You did. You're about to say leader of the opposition, actually leader of the National Assembly. Juan didn't actually stand for...
00:40:53
Speaker
President, the two other candidates who actually competed for the presidential role and thus wasn't actually leader of the opposition, he is simply leader of the National Assembly. It turns out you can declare yourself president by being anyone in Venezuela at this particular point in time. Please do go on.
00:41:10
Speaker
Yes, well, however he managed to clear himself interim president, he's currently being backed by the US. Now, Maduro thinks Guaido is simply the figurehead of a US-backed coup, and Guaido thinks he won the election. Whatever the case, it's swirling claims of conspiracy all around, and it's causing confusion and consternation for everyone who likes to think about politics. Now, I mean, there is talk, I don't know if it's in the US much, certainly in Venezuela, that Venezuela is going to be the next place the US invades.
00:41:40
Speaker
Maybe people are saying it's going to be the next Libya. So I saw Maduro saying stuff along the lines of, you know, don't turn Venezuela into another Vietnam, because if you come in here, we'll give you another Vietnam. We won't go down easy.
00:41:59
Speaker
and talking about making comments on the lines of, you know, we don't... Obviously Venezuela has oil, so they say, you know, just like the Middle East, you're going to come in here because you want to steal our oil, but we don't have a nuclear program, so you can't pretend we have weapons of mass destruction down here, so you're going to claim that the election's fraudulent and you need to come down here and sort things out and so on and so on.
Venezuelan Political Crisis Overview
00:42:23
Speaker
I haven't heard much from the U.S. end. I mean, I know Venezuela is a favorite talking point of right-wingy Republican types because of the fact that it is A, somewhat of a failed state, and B, a socialist state, so it's the one they love to point to. You say, look, seeing socialism doesn't work, because in Venezuela they eat rats. Do you remember that one? Yeah. The two young women, neither of whom really seemed to know much about what they were talking about.
00:42:46
Speaker
who they want to testify is in front of Congress. No, it's sort of a slightly viral one last year. There was a young Republican, it's somewhat like a, I can't remember what event it was, talking to this very disinterested, hipster-ish type woman. They were, or maybe it wasn't even earlier, it was during the campaign. I didn't think it was that long ago, but it was sort of a lefty type organizing thing and she had a t-shirt that said, eat the rich or something.
00:43:14
Speaker
And so this Republican young woman came up to her and said, oh, so you believe in this stuff, do you? Well, in Venezuela, they eat rats. Do you want to eat rats? That's socialism. Socialism is eating rats in Venezuela. And the other one was like, ah, I can't really be bothered with this. And it was just sort of, you know, like, laughing and going, yeah, sure, whatever. But that has been the tenor of discussion of Venezuela in my experience. I assume it's a little more nuanced than that. John Bolton.
00:43:38
Speaker
has been making claims about Venezuela better not test our metal they wouldn't want to test our metal and John Bolton is a bit of a hawk so it's quite possible there could be conflict in Venezuela led by US forces in a future coming to you which would suck just a little bit
00:44:01
Speaker
Well, actually currently the future sucks anyway, that would just make the future even worse than protected. Well, there we go. So, that brings us to the end of our new section. It brings us to the end of our episode. But, well, I'd say, but there is for those of you who are patrons.
00:44:17
Speaker
exciting news to come because we're going to talk about how YouTube is going to suggest fewer conspiracy theory videos, the taxpayers union of Aotearoa New Zealand on tobacco and also the Venezuelan crisis. It's a story to behold. And how a rugby boss here in Aotearoa New Zealand has entered politics on a purely conspiracy theory agenda.
00:44:44
Speaker
But for that, you'll have to be one of our favoured patron types. That was actually during the patron content wasn't it last week that we decided we were going to refer to them exclusively as patrons. Patrons. But now you know we've let you in. That's a little glimpse behind the curtain there. You too could be a patron. You too could have a really quite stupid sounding pet name that we're going to stick to no matter what, because we're committed now.
00:45:11
Speaker
Does that mean I can bring back my bad accent? I don't see how I could possibly stop you. Well, you could punch me in the face. Just like James told you. So, any thoughts to close off this episode before we say our goodbyes?
00:45:27
Speaker
America just should stop meddling in the affairs of other countries. Basically, that's my closing thought, whether it be Syria, whether it be Venezuela. The West needs to actually stop interfering in other countries because historically, this has not worked out well for anyone, apart from the ultra rich. It works out really well for them, which is why, of course, they'll continue to do it. Yes, I think my closing thought is that aging punks tend to be grumpy old buggers.
00:45:58
Speaker
Yeah, probably something we knew before going into it. I like killing junk. I have no strong feelings either way. You probably have strong feelings after going through that. Well, yes. I'll tell you that now. So anyway, like I said at the start,
00:46:17
Speaker
If you thrive on conflict, go listen to this episode. If you value your emotional stability, maybe don't. But either way, we're gonna be here next week. Jazz Coleman presumably won't.
00:46:30
Speaker
I hope not. It would be quite scary if we jumped out from behind the screen over there. That might actually set me off. Oh, and before anyone else, we won't be putting a link to the interview in the podcast, Pod Coast Notes. No. On all the podcast notes. And if you email me saying, can I have a link to the interview? I'll just tell you to go Google it because I'm just, I'm just not interested. I'm just not interested.
00:46:55
Speaker
Well, there we go. So it's goodbye from me. And it's goodbye from Jazz Coleman. Ooh. See him in hell. You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em.
00:47:24
Speaker
You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaign. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter account, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:48:14
Speaker
And remember, silent green is meeples.