Beyond the Water’s Edge: A Conversation with William Ramsey on the Smiley Face Killers, Hidden Patterns, and Institutional Blind Spots

For more than two decades, attorney, author, and investigative podcaster William Ramsey, author of *The Smiley Face Killers: Investigating Suspicious Water Deaths of College-Aged Men in the U.S. and the World, has immersed himself in stories that exist on the outer edges of criminal investigation. His work has taken him through the crimes of Charles Manson, the influence of occult movements, transnational extremist groups, and a long list of controversial subjects that many researchers avoid. Yet among the investigations that have come to define his career, none has occupied more of his attention than the deaths collectively known as the Smiley Face Killers, a subject also explored in the previous article, [The Cold Hunt for Truth: Inside the Investigative Mind of William Ramsey of William Ramsey Investigates (Part One)](https://medium.com/@criminaljusticechris/the-cold-hunt-for-truth-inside-the-investigative-mind-of-william-ramsey-of-william-ramsey-7023e812a575).* The phenomenon remains highly debated, with law enforcement agencies generally attributing many of these deaths to accidents, misadventure, or accidental drownings, while a growing community of independent researchers argues that the similarities among the cases warrant deeper examination and further investigation.

Ramsey did not begin his research believing there was a serial phenomenon at work. In fact, he approached the subject with considerable skepticism. Like many people, he initially regarded the Smiley Face Killers as little more than another modern urban legend, a theory occupying the same cultural space as Bigfoot sightings or the Loch Ness Monster. His opinion only changed after witnessing what he describes as the pattern unfold in real time.

The turning point came while he was researching *Children of the Beast: Aleister Crowley’s Shadow over Humanity. Ramsey had begun noticing repeated appearances of the smiley face symbol throughout popular culture, particularly in works such as [Fight Club](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/) directed by David Fincher and released 1999, and [Watchmen ](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/)*directed by Zack Snyder and released in 2009 . The recurrence struck him as unusual, but symbolism alone was not enough to convince him there was something more. That changed with the disappearance of Joey Labute who lived in Gahanna, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus.

Labute vanished after attending events surrounding the Arnold Sports Festival, one of the largest bodybuilding gatherings in the world. According to Ramsey, the circumstances mirrored many of the reports he had previously dismissed. “He disappears out of a bar. Nobody knows where he is. His phone’s missing,” Ramsey recalled. At the time, he found himself making an internal prediction. “I go, ‘Well, if this guy’s found in water, I’m going to freak out.’”

Nineteen days later, Labute’s body was recovered from the Scioto River in an area that had reportedly already been searched.

“That fit. I just literally witnessed this whole phenomenon take place in front of my eyes,” Ramsey said. “So this isn’t an urban myth. This is real.”

That experience fundamentally altered his approach. Rather than dismissing the deaths as isolated accidents, he immersed himself in decades of cases, studying the work of retired NYPD Sgt. Kevin Gannon who wrote, *Case Studies in Drowning Forensics, retired NYPD detective Anthony Duarte, Dr. Lee Gilbertson, gang specialist and associate professor, Department of Criminal Justice Studies at St. Cloud University, and Eponymous Rox, author of [THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN: Investigating the Smiley Face Serial Murder Theory](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089HD4A4?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback)*, while building his own database.

His central argument is not merely that similarities exist, but that those similarities appear with enough frequency to warrant far more serious investigation than they have received.

Ramsey points to recurring victimology that, in his view, has been consistently overlooked. Many of the victims are young men who disappear after spending an evening at bars or social events before eventually being recovered from bodies of water after extensive searches have already failed to locate them. He believes the deaths are frequently classified as accidental drownings long before investigators adequately examine alternative explanations.

“I think they’re deliberately making it look like somebody accidentally drowned,” Ramsey said.

That conclusion places him directly at odds with many official determinations. Rather than suggesting investigators are intentionally concealing information, Ramsey argues that institutional incentives encourage simple explanations over complicated ones. An accidental drowning closes a case. A potential serial homicide investigation creates pressure, consumes resources, and raises uncomfortable public questions.

“The police are interested in the open-and-shut case,” he said. “There’s no incentive to disclose all the information they’ve collected.”

His frustration with law enforcement extends beyond investigative conclusions and into the public availability of records. Throughout his own research, Ramsey has repeatedly sought police reports, autopsy records, and investigative files, only to encounter what he describes as persistent resistance.

“Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible,” he said when asked about his experience obtaining official records. “They’re just not interested. They’re open-and-shut cases typically, and they’re not helpful to independent researchers at all.”

According to Ramsey, some of the most significant developments have occurred only after victims’ families independently pursued autopsy reports years after the original investigations concluded. In several instances, he argues, information contained within those reports differed substantially from public descriptions of the deaths, raising additional questions about injuries that had never been publicly discussed.

Rather than placing complete faith in official conclusions, Ramsey encourages families to become active participants in their own investigations.

“Get a third-party autopsy,” he advised without hesitation. “Do your own research because the cops aren’t going to help you. In my experience, the cops aren’t helpful in these SFK cases.”

He cites the case of Chris Jenkins in Minneapolis as an example of what determined family advocacy can accomplish. Jenkins’ mother continued pressing investigators for years, eventually helping persuade authorities to change the official classification of her son’s death from accidental to misadventure. Ramsey views that reversal as a rare exception that demonstrates how persistence can sometimes overcome institutional inertia.

Although the unexplained drownings remain the primary focus of his work, Ramsey believes the most controversial aspect of the investigation lies elsewhere. He argues that the smiley face itself should not automatically be interpreted as random graffiti or adolescent vandalism. Instead, he believes the symbol may function as a form of esoteric communication understood only by those operating within particular ideological or occult frameworks.

“The smiley face has an esoteric and an exoteric meaning,” Ramsey explained. “The exoteric is just a smiley face. But the esoteric is like the Joker…you laugh at even the tragedy of things.”

For Ramsey, symbolism has always occupied a central role in understanding criminal behavior. He points to recurring appearances of the smiley face in works such as Watchmen, Fight Club, and V for Vendetta, arguing that these works repeatedly associate smiling imagery with nihilism, violence, and hidden meanings rather than innocence or humor.

“If you’re initiated, you know what that means,” he said. “If you’re not initiated…you’ll never have it.”

Ramsey is careful to distinguish his interpretation from certainty. He repeatedly acknowledged that he has never been part of any occult organization himself, but believes recurring symbolic patterns deserve serious examination rather than immediate dismissal.

“I’ve never been initiated,” he said. “But I can see the patterns.”

His broader hypothesis extends beyond symbolism alone. Ramsey does not believe the Smiley Face Killers represent a single offender traveling across the country. Instead, he proposes the possibility of multiple individuals or loosely connected groups communicating through shared symbolism and ritualized behavior.

“There have been people who’ve disappeared on the same night in different states,” he observed. “So it can’t be one person. I think it’s a group. I think it’s groups of people communicating through cryptographic exchanges all over the world.”

Whether one accepts that conclusion or rejects it entirely, Ramsey insists that behavioral patterns deserve closer examination than they have received. Geography, he argues, reveals localized clusters of deaths that appear difficult to explain through coincidence alone. Chicago experienced what he describes as a concentrated series of similar fatalities within a relatively brief period. Other spikes have occurred elsewhere across the United States, including Texas, where Ramsey believes the pattern expanded dramatically over the past two decades.

Timing also occupies a prominent place in his analysis. He notes that virtually every case occurs at night.

“There isn’t one that happens during the day,” he said. “People do go for night swims, but it’s not often like, ‘Hey guys, before I go home, I’m going to jump in the river.’ It’s so rare.”

Ramsey has also examined seasonal and calendar patterns, identifying recurring concentrations during winter months and around holidays such as Halloween and New Year’s. Independent researchers have compiled extensive spreadsheets cataloging these homicides, and while Ramsey stops short of claiming definitive proof of ritual scheduling, he believes the correlations deserve systematic study rather than dismissal.

“They treasure these dates and times,” he said while discussing occult traditions. “To get the maximum energy, you have to have all these things in alignment.”

That philosophy, he argues, reflects belief systems found within certain extremist occult organizations, including the Order of Nine Angles, whose writings describe astronomical alignments, ritual timing, and symbolic communication as central components of their worldview. Ramsey acknowledges that many investigators reject those connections outright, but he believes doing so reflects a longstanding institutional reluctance to consider occult motivation as a legitimate factor in violent crime.

“The FBI…it seems like there is no occult-motivated crime to them,” he said. “Everything can be explained away by other means.”

Whether that criticism is justified remains a matter of debate among researchers, academics, and law enforcement professionals. The FBI has historically cautioned investigators against attributing crimes to ritualistic or occult motivations without supporting evidence, emphasizing behavioral analysis, forensic findings, and verifiable investigative data over symbolism alone. However, the examination of symbols, narratives, and ideological indicators has become an increasingly recognized component of threat assessment and criminal analysis, known as events analysis with the field of criminology, particularly in areas involving terrorism, extremism, and targeted violence. Ramsey argues that completely dismissing symbolism as irrelevant may cause investigators to overlook potential connections, patterns, or leads that could link otherwise isolated cases.

His criticism ultimately extends beyond the Smiley Face Killers. Ramsey believes investigators too often stop looking once a suspect has been convicted of a single homicide. He cited offenders such as Mark Latunski, Scarlet Blake, and Stephen Port as examples where broader questions about possible additional victims deserved deeper examination.

“I think there are a lot of criminals who’ve gone to jail and they’ve done other crimes,” he said.

For Ramsey, the larger issue is not simply whether every unexplained drowning belongs to a single conspiracy. Instead, it is whether investigators remain sufficiently open to revisiting assumptions that have hardened into accepted conclusions.

That philosophy has become the defining characteristic of his investigative work. Rather than asking readers to accept extraordinary claims outright, Ramsey repeatedly returns to a simpler proposition: patterns deserve investigation, uncomfortable questions deserve to be asked, and official conclusions should never become immune from scrutiny simply because they are official.

Whether history ultimately validates or disproves his theories, Ramsey has succeeded in forcing a difficult conversation into public view. The Smiley Face Killers remain one of the most polarizing subjects in modern criminal investigation precisely because the evidence can support profoundly different interpretations depending upon one’s assumptions. To Ramsey, however, skepticism should never become dismissal.

“There are weird times and dates associated with the Smiley Face Killers,” he said, “that should engender further research.”

That, perhaps more than any individual theory, defines his work. In an era increasingly driven by quick conclusions and institutional certainty, Ramsey continues arguing that unanswered questions are not investigative failures — they are invitations to keep looking.

References

Ramsey, William. “Interview with William Ramsey of William Ramsey Investigates.” Interview by Chris Clough. Recorded via Zoom, July 7, 2026.