Former detective says string of Houston deaths may be linked to alleged ‘Smiley Face’ killer network

Bodies keep surfacing — and so do questions.

There’s a dark current in Houston’s bayous this year, with 16 bodies recovered, five of them in the same week last month.

City leaders are downplaying speculation about a potential serial killer, but retired NYPD Sgt. Kevin Gannon, who has long espoused the theory that a group known as the “Smiley Face Killers” is responsible for hundreds of suspicious drowning deaths around the U.S., says he believes the deaths may be connected.

“We’ve never seen drowning numbers like this before, especially with a drowning occurring every other day in the same location,” he told Fox News Digital.

Retired NYPD Sgt. Joseph Giacalone, a criminal justice professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley and a skeptic of the Smiley theory, said the mayor’s remarks were premature.

“You have 16 bodies, you can’t just say everybody’s dying and getting thrown into the river and everybody’s homeless,” he told Fox News Digital. “You don’t even know if they’re from your town.”

Each case, he said, should be individually investigated.

“You need an individual autopsy and full toxicology on each one of these bodies,” he continued.

Forensic pathologists can also determine whether the victims were dead before they went into water — or if they drowned, he said.