ACROSS THE POND: Manchester's Serial 'Pusher' Drowns 29th Victim

Fears across the pond about a serial killer dubbed 'The Pusher' have heightened again, now that another drowned man has surfaced in a Manchester UK canal.

The body of "a white middle-aged male" was found floating in a Greater Manchester spillway over the weekend, making his "unexplained" drowning one of dozens that have occurred in the past several years.

Manchester cops and coroners have ruled the cold-weather drowning deaths of at least 29 of these "mostly young male victims" as due to "undetermined" causes, in many cases also labeling their missing persons cases "suspicious."

In fact, in 2015 local officials acknowledged in a YouTube public-service presentation intended to allay serial murder fears that "some" of their drowned men had indeed been "deliberately pushed" by an unknown assailant.

Manchester UK's elusive serial Pusher allegedly has been active since 2008, but a couple of high profile disappearances and drownings of male college students in 2011 and 2012 brought national attention to the case:

On New Year's day 2012, young design student Souvik Pal vanished without a trace, after bar bouncers physically removed him from the Warehouse Project Club in Trafford Park.

Minutes after, surveillance cameras captured images of the teen being escorted on foot by an *unidentified* man, after which Pal was never seen alive again. 

The body of the 18-year-old "excellent swimmer" was pulled from the Bridgewater Canal system almost a month later; and a medical examiner then left his case open and unsolved when she couldn't determine how he'd entered the water.

Pal joins the ranks of numerous other young men who also "got separated" from their friends and subsequently met a chilly end in Manchester waterways.

For instance, 21-year-old athlete and sports trainer Nathan Tomlinson likewise vanished while visiting a city pub after dark during the winter holidays.

His  body was fished out of the River Irwell in February 2011, two months after he went missing.

In all, some seven-dozen victims like Tomlinson and Pal have been pulled from the area's icy canals and rivers in as many years.

Although the majority of these were ruled "accidental," far too many others disappeared and drowned under circumstances which were clearly so questionable that even crime experts are now subscribing to the serial Pusher theory.

Birmingham City University professor and criminologist Craig Jackson is just one of many who have been expressing similar beliefs that "it's unlikely" all of Manchester's water fatalities could be "accidents or suicides."

And in a recent United Kingdom news documentary titled Manchester's Serial Killer? a senior police detective also outlined the body of evidence which supports a contention that the multiple drownings are intentional homicides.

The Case of The Drowning Men first came to light in the United States during the late 1990s.

Since then, hundreds of young males of every race, creed and nationality have suddenly gone missing, only to be found drowned days, weeks or months later in rivers, lakes, ponds, streams ... and canals.

America calls its pushers 'The Smiley Face Killers' but, by whatever moniker they're called, the standard operating procedure appears to be the same.

EPONYMOUS ROX

Missing UK Man Found Drowned

Missing man James Brindley inexplicably vanished this month during a Christmas party at a pub in Stoke-on-Trent. Days later his corpse was fished out of a nearby canal.

Staffordshire Police said the 28-year-old's disappearance and death was now being treated as "unexplained" and that some of his personal items were also retrieved on the canal's towpath in the water-rescue team's search for him.

Brindley's disappearance from a downtown bar and his apparent cold-weather drowning is similar to many others confounding cops in the UK in recent years. Even Spain and France are beginning to see a similar pattern in their river districts.

Until then such cases -- dubbed the Smiley Face Murders -- had been a decades-old phenomenon largely limited to the United States and Canada, and particularly concentrated in the Great Lakes region where both Canada and the US share a border.

UK authorities are presently awaiting autopsy and toxicology results before listing a cause or manner of death for James Brindley.

Eponymous Rox

Smiley in Cali? Paulo Netto found drowned in San Francisco

With confirmation that 22-year-old Paulo Netto has been found drowned near Pier 48, the search is still on for the Frisco Five missing under ominously similar circumstances. 

Brazilian-born Netto came to the city in October 2013 in order to explore art schools there. He vanished one night after placing a frantic call for help to his sister.

Police say they tracked the youth's cellphone but "no one was there" when they arrived shortly thereafter. They then began suggesting that Netto's "state of mind" must have been impaired somehow, although never elaborating on the reasons for their theory.

Paulo Netto's missing persons case mirrors hundreds of "Smiley Face Killer" ones accumulated nationwide over the past 16 years -- including a handful from the specific area he was visiting.

The west coast, however, is a recent hot spot for these kind of disappearances and drownings, having never before made it on the map.

So far there are five other missing young men in the California cluster since 2010, all of whom vanished without a trace and from the exact same San Francisco district:  

1. The body of Derrick Shao, 20, washed ashore on November 7, 2013, eight days after the college student went missing;.

2. Nineteen-year-old Sean Sidi has been missing since May 21st of this year;

3. Shawn Dickerson, a 24-year-old, has been unaccounted for since 2011;

4. Businessman Cameron Remmer, 31, hasn't been heard from since checking out of his hotel room in October 2011;

5. Jackson Miller, 23-years-old, likewise mysteriously disappeared in May of 2010;

The badly decomposed body of Paulo Netto was actually found floating in McCovey Cove last month, but it allegedly took all these weeks for the coroner to positively identify those remains.

His cause of death has not been released yet.

Smiley Face International Kill Spree Underway?



Smiley Pandemic No Laughing Matter

Thomas Ducroo: On February 5th 2011, Thomas Ducroo, 26, was walking home from an evening out on the town when he vanished without a trace. The extensive search for the charismatic young man by family, friends and local police produced no clues until, finally, his body was discovered by tactical divers in the channel on February 23rd 2011. Where did Thomas Ducroo disappear from and drown? The city of Lille, France.

Austin Bice: On February 26th 2011, popular grad student Austin Bice, 22, suddenly disappeared after being denied entry to a busy downtown nightclub by one of its doormen. Bice, who at six-foot-five and 230 pounds was described as a "gentle giant" and extremely athletic, had accompanied five friends to the bar, all of whom said he wasn't that intoxicated. Bice's drowned corpse was discovered at the bottom of the nearby river eleven days later. Officials said he was inebriated, fell into the water, and had a heart attack as he accidentally drowned. Where did Austin Bice vanish from? Madrid, Spain.

Paul Bunbury: On March 13th 2012, the badly decomposed corpse of Paul Bunbury, 19, was discovered floating in the river near a downtown dock, almost six weeks after the university student had mysteriously gone missing. Bunbury, who was last seen on campus sometime around midday on February 2, 2012, was described as being five-foot-ten, 160 pounds, with brown eyes, long brown hair, and a beard. A popular student, his schoolmates launched a major search and internet campaign to find him. Where did Paul Bunbury disappear from and "accidentally" drown? Dublin, Ireland.

Paul Foster: On January 10th 2010, 28-year-old Paul Michael Foster and his truck mysteriously disappeared en route to a movie that evening. He was eventually discovered missing by neighbors because his dog, to whom he was devoted, had begun howling after enduring three days of his master's absence. Nine months later, at the beginning of September, tactical divers on an unrelated mission spotted Foster's truck rusting away in Hamilton Harbor. His remains were found inside of it. Officials emphatically stated there was "no sign of foul play" evidenced in autopsy, and "no reason to believe" that the young man wasn't in the water the entire time he was missing. Where did Paul Foster disappear and drown? Ontario, Canada.

Michael Jansson: On the night of March 9th 2001, dapper "Mikey" Jansson, age 21, was visiting the Biology Bar with a small group of friends when he was abruptly ejected from the establishment by bouncers. Shortly after that event both Jansson and the black Buick Sabre he was alleged to have been driving vanished without a trace. His cellphone, however, was retained for the personal use of various members of Biology's security team, until they disposed of it someplace where it was never to be found again. Partly due to the city police department's initial reluctance to search for him, Jansson himself was never found either. However, on December 15th 2012, over a decade after he was first reported missing, the fender of the young man's car was sighted in the nearby river...and inside the muddy vehicle was a human skeleton. Authorities are now awaiting the results of DNA tests on those bones before formally announcing that they belong to Jansson. Where did this luckless young man disappear from and presumably drown? Chicago, Illinois.        

"Hopefully he's alive," says the distraught father of 18-year-old college student Souvik Pal, missing now since January 1, 2013 when he was ejected at 11:00 PM from a nightclub during New Year's eve celebrations. Souvik's friends who were also at the popular Warehouse Project club say that, typically, the young man wasn't drinking very much, so they can't understand why security would have targeted him. Police have been searching all the nearby waterways, but so far he isn't in any of them. Where did Souvik Pal mysteriously disappear from? Manchester, United Kingdom. Will he too be found drowned?  *UPDATE: on January 22nd 2013, Souvik Pal was found dead in a canal near Old Trafford stadium in Manchester UK, a short distance from the nightclub where he was last seen after bouncers separated him from his friends. Outdoor surveillance video showed the student attempting to return to the premises immediately after being thrown out by security for a misunderstanding concerning the location of the bathrooms. Autopsy could not determine the cause or manner of death as Pal was evidently not intoxicated. It isn't clear if the club's bouncers responsible for this event were ever questioned by police, or are even still in town. *The tip for this status report was provided by reader 'Tuned_In'  (Thanks, mate.)

Just stumbled on the 'Smiley Face Serial Murders' for the very first time?

Learn about this famous case in THE CASE OF THE DROWNING MEN