Smiley Face Killers update

Read a 2015 Smiley Face Killers update on Crime Magazine containing special mention of still-missing Pennsylvania resident Paul Kochu, as well as the Shane Montgomery disappearance and drowning in that same state and time-frame.

Portrait on the article's accompanying illustration (shown above) is that of Michael Jansson, a youth who similarly vanished without a trace from an Illinois dance club on the evening of March 9, 2001.

In classic Smiley Face Killers tradition, he was never seen or heard from again, until the car he'd hurriedly fled in that night was found twelve years later, upside down at the bottom of the Chicago River. 

A subsequent DNA test on the skeletal remains strewn throughout the vehicle confirmed they were in fact "Mikey" Jansson's bones ... full story @ Crime Magazine.

Missing in Michigan - Ken Gruno

Ken Gruno went mysteriously missing in Michigan on the evening of December 27th 2014, after stepping outside a pub for a breath of fresh air. The 27-year-old left behind his coat and credit card, and a group of bewildered mates.

Since Gruno's unexplained disappearance, family, friends and police have conducted numerous searches of the neighborhood and even the nearby riverbanks.

Now, however, bad weather and subzero temperatures are seriously hampering their efforts to find the missing man, and the major search which was to be launched today has had to be postponed for fear that participants may be harmed in the process.

Ken Gruno was celebrating the holidays with friends at the Otisville Hotel bar in the 100 block of West Main Street in northern Genesee County, where he appears to have somehow completely dematerialized -- he has not been seen or heard from since that night.

"It's completely out of his character," say those who know him best. "He's always in contact with someone, or on his computer." 

Gruno is approximately 6-feet tall and 175 pounds. He was wearing blue jeans, a gray flannel shirt with a vest and bowtie, and slip-on work boots. Anyone with information regarding his bizarre disappearance is asked to call the Michigan State Police Flint post at 810-732-1111.

Eponymous Rox

Shane Montgomery Accidentally Drowned - In Winter

Shane Montgomery accidentally drowned in a river, claims the medical examiner who just performed an autopsy on the previously-missing youth's corpse. Now the question that will forever remain unanswered is: Why in the world would he have gone swimming in the middle of winter?

With that weird official finding, however, Montgomery now joins a growing list of similar young men who, since the late 1990s, fatefully and fatally decided to do the same foolish thing.

Some were "intoxicated" or "on drugs" or "troubled" authorities have routinely ruled. But some were not, and yet they too disappeared and drowned anyway, including those who "misdialed" 911 in the minutes before they vanished without a trace.

Like many of the victims before him, Shane Montgomery mysteriously went missing after an altercation in a bar he had attended with friends this holiday season. It was a minor incident, the bar's owner and management now admit, but, whatever, it got him promptly thrown out into the cold that night, and thereafter he was never seen alive again.

More than a week into the community-search for him, police insisted they'd discovered surveillance video of Montgomery subsequently "stumbling" near the towpath of a nearby canal; vital evidence which, for some unknown reason, wasn't released to the public.

But this apparently rare piece of secret film footage helped to *connect all the dots* it seems. And therefore it made perfect sense to them to then assume they'd find Montgomery's corpse in the river or canal. With no signs of foul play on it, naturally.

So, who knows, perhaps young men these days are just more sensitive than they were 20, 50, 100, 200 years ago, and thus now become truly despondent whenever they're forcibly separated from their buddies, and a river, lake, pond or stream is close by... 

Eponymous Rox

Shane Montgomery Missing: Presumed Drowned

The search for missing student Shane Montgomery has focused on the river and canal. Like other Smiley Face Killer victims who vanished after a late night mid-winter encounter with heavy-handed police, and/or bouncers, he too was instantly presumed to have "somehow" drowned:

Montgomery disappeared in Philadelphia over the Thanksgiving holiday immediately after an over-zealous bouncer unceremoniously ejected the youth from the bar he and his friends were celebrating at.

It is the same district that Carlesha Freeland-Gaither's violent street-abduction occurred last month. One which was captured and thus quickly solved via surveillance cameras positioned throughout the area, and, of course, with aid from the kidnapped woman's abandoned cell phone.

Yet, strangely enough, Montgomery's would-be rescuers claim those very same devices are of little help to them now. It seems, when a hunt involves a missing young man, "it's a real challenge looking for video from surveillance cameras." And, "Trying to determine from the missing person's cell phone where they were last using the phone," is also weirdly perplexing.

But at least these inordinately confounded authorities are "interviewing as many people as [they] can."

Classically, this approach too will no doubt prove futile, as stories quickly change and film footage of the event and the territory it took place in begins to rapidly deteriorate, ultimately to vanish just as Shane Montgomery did: without a trace.

One thing is for certain though, if indeed the *educated hunch* is correct that Montgomery is somewhere in the frigid canal or river, then his body won't refloat to the surface for a number of weeks and maybe even months. By which time his slowly decomposing corpse would have naturally created volumes and volumes of alcohol -- far in excess of what he consumed just prior to his death.

And, using that false BAC level, he'll thereafter officially be declared to have been "severely intoxicated" and to have "accidentally drowned" as a result.

Case closed. Again.

Story from 12/1/14 - see comment section for updates

NOTE:  Body found in river on January 3rd 2015
believed by family to be Shane Montgomery's -  read 
SHANE MONTGOMERY "ACCIDENTALLY DROWNED"
(Feel free to add your own comments and
updates in either article's comment section.)