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Apr 29, 2008 1:42 pm US/Eastern
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'Serial' Drownings May Be Linked To Gang Activity
Possible Gang Insignia Found Near Many Water 'Entry' Points; More Than 40 Bodies Recovered In 11 States
Reporting
Lou Young
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Patrick McNeil's mother believes her son's killing has gone unpunished.
"I want people to know that my son was murdered. That he was
not a drunk who fell into the water," she told CBS 2.
Her son vanished from the Upper East Side of Manhattan 11 years ago in the dead of winter. The Fordham University student left a bar telling his friends he had an early class and never returned. Fifty days later his body found floating in the waters off Bay Ridge in Brooklyn.
Now, Jackie McNeil is rejecting the medical examiner's finding that her son's death was an accidental drowning. An NYPD Detective who was on the case in 1997 stayed on it as a private citizen and began to investigate young men who vanished under similar circumstances in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa and beyond.
Kevin Gannon is leading a team of experts, bankrolling the probe with his own money, he says, and "connecting dots" that outline a monstrous plot.
What appear to be a drownings to local police, he insists, are really cult-like murders. He says there are no obvious signs of trauma or distress that could come from someone falling, and in several of the cases he and people have traced river and harbor currents to pinpoint probable points of entry and found chillingly similar "smiley face" graffitti tags that could be tied to a loosely affiliated gang.
"These people are being placed in the water," he says. "It's just preposterous to think these men are all coming out of a bar and walking into the water."
Professor P. Lee Gilbertson, who is also on the team, is more specific. "This a national organization that
revels in the killing of young men," he says.
Sara Lightner, whose brother's body was found in the Mississippi River five years ago, says she believes the dissappearrances begin as targeted kidnappings. He brother, she tells me "was abducted, thrown into a vehicle, was tortured ... for hours then murdered and placed in the water."
Jackie McNeil believes it's a pattern that stretches back to her own son's death in 1997.
"I do believe this is how he died," she said, "and I believe the case should be opened up."
A spokesman for NYPD says the department is unaware of any new information that change the status of Patrick McNeil's case. There was no immediate comment from the FBI.
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