The killers are also hyper-competent. Whoever they are, they represent something that we haven’t seen yet, something that is not yet described by criminal psychology. Perhaps, there is a small sub-set of serial killers that is in fact predisposed to working together and whose behavior is not oriented towards a deep-seated desire to be viewed by the public, discovered by law enforcement, or a hope of being caught. The level of competence, tight operational security, and seeming occult leanings suggested by the choice of victims leads me to believe that these are absolutely not serial killers of the variety that we are familiar with such as John Wayne Gacy or Ed Gein.
This leads us to another uncomfortable question: what group of people have the institutional knowledge required to pull off a long running string of murders while cunningly avoiding CCTV cameras, leaving behind no physical evidence, and alluding the detection of law enforcement? Granted, I have my own cognitive bias based on my experience and history. A rogue operator is not out of the question. The possibility that someone from the intelligence community, special operations, or even within law enforcement itself has gone off the reservation cannot be discounted out of hand. Such a case would not be unprecedented as former Delta Force operator Marshall L. Brown was discovered to be a fairly prolific serial rapist who used his urban climbing and lock picking skills to break into women’s homes.
However, it would also be a huge mistake as well as arrogant to think that only members from our own community could be competent. One need not have insider knowledge or be a highly trained government operative to elude police. Reading textbooks and case studies on forensic science, evidence collection, and criminology would suffice. A rogue operator could be plausible, but a group of rogue operators turned serial killers seems extremely improbable. Some of us are more moral than others, but we are all institutionalized by the system, and wholesale unsanctioned murder within America is something alien to us.
Another question is why these murders begin to appear in clusters largely beginning in 1997? Similar murders in the Great Lakes region actually date back to the 1700’s but the big surge begins in ’97 and continues to this day. Why? I would hypothesis that the game changer that took place here was the internet. The internet existed previously for a long time and pedophiles were using dial-up modems to trade child pornography in the 1980’s. Yet, it wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1990’s that the internet truly became popular for the masses. This advancement in communications technology would allow previously isolated individuals with similar ideas to suddenly find each other and gather into semi-clandestine cliques.
Cullen Fortney was nearly a victim, but survived and was interviewed by Kevin Gannon. One moment the 21-year-old was having a drink in a bar. Then, after a prolonged period of missing time that lasted from 2AM to 6:45AM, he woke up floating downstream in the freezing Mississippi river. Swimming to shore, he staggered up to the street and by some miracle was right in front of a hospital which he entered at about 7AM. If he had been in the water, or exposed to the elements much longer, he certainly would have died. These are not normal accidental drownings, Cullen was drugged and thrown into the water with the intention of drowning him.
At this point you are no doubt wanting me to reveal who the killers are and solve the mystery for you, but I can’t. The best I can offer is speculation as to who the killers are. As I noted previously, their method of operation and the data points gathered over a long period of time indicate a well-organized, competent, and intelligent small group of people. Their actions are planned in detail and rehearsed ahead of time. They have not made any big mistakes over the course of two decades, indicating discipline and unit cohesion. There is a central belief system that binds these individuals together, although I cannot be sure of what it is.
I would speculate that the killers are a type of cult. Technically, they are serial killers but not the kind we are used to dealing with. They may be a cult, but also not the type of cult we are used to thinking of, such as the Branch Davidians or Heaven’s Gate cults. This cult may be a subset of an existing cult or religion, one that has a two-tiered belief system, one which is for public consumption and one which is only for a small group of hardcore believers within the organization. The well-educated and athletic young men that are chosen as victims are probably seen as ritual sacrifices to this group’s god, gods, demons, or whatever it is they believe in. What is done to the victims during the “lost time” between the when they are drugged and when they are thrown into the water remains unknown. Sometimes it is a period of hours, sometimes it is days.
Furthermore, I would speculate that a portion of this group’s organization exists above the surface and has public visibility. This would help ensure the group’s social camouflage, better allowing it to blend in and providing plausible deniability to the killers for being near each other at certain locations at certain times.
This cult is likely to have been in existence for a long period of time, or members of the cult have a long history of murder behind them. The organization carries with it an institutional knowledge that is passed down from the elders to the younger generation. How recruiting and induction is initiated, I can’t possibly know; although I would stick to my thesis that it began on the internet in the mid-1990’s or at least ramped up at that time. What the core beliefs of the cult are and what motivations individual members have can also only be hypothesized, but I believe that there are occult beliefs represented.
It all sounds like an episode of True Detective, and the amount of red herrings such as the occult references and smiley faces make cases like this that much harder to sift through. It is easy to pass from a fact-based investigation, to a wild conspiracy theory, to outright hysteria resembling the Salem witch trials all in the blink of an eye. For instance, I’m old enough to recall the insane grumbling of Ted Gunderson, wild claims about Dungeons and Dragons, and TV talk shows having guests on talking about how Satanists were abducting children from a daycare center via a secret tunnel for ritualistic abuse. One has to be extremely careful about wandering down the rabbit holes.
I would also speculate that an intelligent serial killer or killers would float obscene occult evidence in front of our eyes intentionally, in order to distract the public and throw law enforcement off their scent. For now, there are only alcohol related accidental drownings with no connection to one another. There is no such thing as Smiley Face killers according to the authorities.
Perhaps that means that everything is going according to plan.
If I were assigned to investigate these murders, one hypothesis that I would look at is whether or not there was a specific special target within the grouping of so-called accidental drownings. In other words, I would be asking if there was not a high value target hidden within the cluster of murders. The killers could very well be inoculating the police and the public to killings that fit a certain profile, and with that accomplished they are then going to move on to their high priority target knowing that his murder will be overlooked as they have reshaped our culture and desensitized their area of operations. The serial killer thesis has already been beta-tested in the media and has been rejected by the authorities, giving a green light for those looking to take advantage of the situation.
Serial killers usually don’t present a national security threat, but one day they might.
(lead picture courtesy of the author)
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