Story 1. The Smiley Face Killers

For the last quarter of a century, the bodies of fit and healthy young men have been recovered from the waterways which

crisscrossed the US. Whilst their deaths were ruled accidental by the authorities,

a small group of retired detectives believed that they were instead the victims of an organized group of murderers.

Who are the smiley face killers? You're going to be. And then. For Kevin Gannon, it began on the morning of the 7th of April 1997, with the discovery of a

body floating in the New York Bay, not far from the 65th Street Pier. As the duty sergeant of the NYPD Special Investigation Division, he had

been called to assist with the recovery of the deceased by the city's harbour

patrol unit.

It had not taken long at all to identify the victim as 21-year-old university student, Patrick

McNeil, but the circumstances surrounding the death would set in motion a chain of events

which would stay with Gannon forever.

As he flipped through the pages of McNeil's missing person report,

the career detective noted that the youth had gone

missing almost two months prior, last seen stumbling out of a bar in Manhattan's Upper East side.

But the body laid out on the mortuary slab in front of him had not

decomposed enough to have been floating in the water for the last week, let alone

eight or nine weeks.

As the autopsy proceeded, Gannon found himself noting down further troubling inaccuracies.

In addition to the abnormally low level of decay,

fly larvae were found in the body,

which should not have been possible given the cold temperatures at the time

MacNeil had gone missing.

...