There is something in the water.
Again and again, men have turned up dead in Austin, Texas’, Lady Bird Lake, a stretch of the Colorado River running through the heart of the city, near a popular strip of bars and food trucks on Rainey Street.
Four this year, and according to local reports, as many as eight in the past 10 months.
However, while police say they have found no signs of trauma on the victims or evidence of foul play, experts on the outside say so many drownings in one place would be a striking coincidence.
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A hike and bike trail along Lady Bird Lake is feet from the end of Rainey Street on Sunday, April 2, 2023 in downtown Austin, Texas. Four bodies have been recovered along the shore near Rainey Street and East Avenue in 2023. (Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman/USA TODAY NETWORK)
“That lake and these bars have been there for years,” Kevin Gannon, a former NYPD detective sergeant, told Fox News Digital. “All of the sudden [these deaths] happen at the same time? It’s not consistent with normal accidental drownings.”
“Just from the sheer number and the fact that there’s so many in a short period of time, I don’t believe that it’s accidental.”
Especially when it takes effort to get down to the waterfront from the popular night spot, which is a couple of blocks away.
The answers to other lingering questions are likely known to investigators but not to the public, said John Kelly, a criminal profiler who has interviewed numerous serial killers.
A sign warns of poor lighting conditions at night on a hike and bike trail along Lady Bird Lake that passes the end of Rainey Street on Sunday, April 2, 2023 in downtown Austin, Texas. (Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman/USA TODAY NETWORK)
“I would be interested in knowing what these guys had in common besides Rainey Street,” he told Fox News Digital. “Did they go to the same bar?…Something else that bothers me is that they seem not to be with friends. They’re all alone.”
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Austin police identified the latest victim Monday afternoon as John Christopher Hays-Clark, 30. He was pronounced dead at the scene near a dam about two miles down river from where the others were found, closer to Rainey Street.
“While the investigation is still in the early stages, we do not suspect foul play was involved based on the information we have at this time,” police said. “The investigation remains ongoing, and we have no further information to provide.”
The approximate locations of the four recent bodies found in Austin, Texas’, Lady Bird Lake, based on estimations from local reports and Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services. (Google Maps)
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“Although these cases are still under investigation and evidence is being analyzed, at this time, there is no evidence in any of these cases to support allegations of foul play,” Austin police said in a statement. “While each incident has occurred at the lake, the circumstances, exact locations, and demographics surrounding these cases vary.”
Christopher Pugh’s 21-year-old son, Christian, mysteriously went missing in November 2019 after a night out on Rainey Street in downtown Austin, Texas, and was found days later with “serious” injuries by the lake. (April 13 Austin City Council Meeting)
Police found Jason John, 30, dead in Lady Bird Lake in February, a week after he was last been seen on Rainey Street, which has a popular row of bars near the water. Clifton Axtell, 40, was identified as the man found dead on March 5. Jonathan Honey, 33, was found on April 1, a day after he was last seen at a food truck on Rainey Street.
Jamie Hammonds, of DashATX, has also raised doubts about the deaths being a series of accidental drownings – and he told Fox News Digital Wednesday that he has heard repeatedly from locals nightmare stories of getting slipped drugs on Rainey Street.
“I have been digging into this now for the last couple of weeks pretty much every day, and the odds of this happening this many deaths in that one spot, all men around the same age, the odds are pretty astronomical if this is just a coincidence,” he said.
The shore of Lady Bird Lake is less than one hundred feet from the end of Rainey Street on Sunday, April 2, 2023 in downtown Austin, Texas. (Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman/USA TODAY NETWORK)
Autopsy reports were not yet available, but police said the victims showed no signs of trauma, and they had not seen evidence of foul play. However, drugs like GHB, commonly known as “roofies,” are quickly metabolized and can be out of a victim’s system by the time they reach a forensic pathologist, Hammonds noted. That is if the medical examiner even tests for them.
Concerned residents have voiced their fears at public hearings on social media, where a Facebook group dedicated to the topic has attracted 70,000 members in the past few weeks.
“There are too many people that have gone missing,” Austin resident Christopher Pugh told the Austin City Council earlier this month. “There are too many people that have been injured. There are too many people that can walk off, and we still have absolutely no answers as to what has happened to any of those folks.”
Pugh’s 21-year-old son, Christian, went missing for several days in 2019 after partying on Rainey Street. Search teams found him alive but in “very rough condition” and disoriented in the brush of a hiking trail on the other side of the lake, FOX 7 Austin reported at the time.
“One common theme of the drownings in Austin this year is the combination of alcohol and easy access to Lady Bird Lake, which has numerous access points,” police said. “Many of the access points can be challenging to see at night.”
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They noted that those areas close at 10 p.m. and urged people not to enter them at night.
However, investigations into each of the deaths remained active this week.
Despite the lack of evidence of foul play, speculation about a possible serial killer has swirled.
Missing person flyer for Jonathan Honey, whose body was found by Austin, Texas, police in Lady Bird Lake. (Provided to FOX 7 Austin)
Austin has had one other serial killer in the past, around the time of Jack the Ripper. The “Servant Girl Annihilator” is believed to have killed eight women between December 1884 and December 1885. No one was ever caught.
However, the lake cases appear to have more in common with more recent crimes.
Beginning in the mid 1990s, a gang of “Smiley Face Killers” has been proposed as the source of numerous deaths of young men found in the Midwest. In those cases, young, fit men were found dead in bodies of water after they had last been seen out drinking.
Mitchell Gutierrez, whose brother died of “an accidental drowning” after going missing from Rainey Street in downtown Austin, Texas, in 2018, speaks at an April 13 city council meeting. (April 13 Austin City Council Meeting)
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Just last month, New York City police announced investigations into two separate gangs suspected of drugging people in Manhattan bars in order to use the victims’ unconscious faces to unlock their phones with facial recognition technology. The thieves drained their mobile banking accounts and apps like Venmo and Cash App. Those rings are still under investigation, although prosecutors have announced arrests and indictments.
“Just from the sheer number and the fact that there’s so many in a short period of time, I don’t believe that it’s accidental,” said Gannon, who with the NYPD was credited with more than 1,000 felony arrests and, at the time of his retirement, the most decorated officer in the department’s history.
Cyclists pass beneath the downtown skyline on the hike and bike trail on Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. (Reuters/Julia Robinson)
Gannon was later part of a private investigation into the “Smiley Face” serial killer theory chronicled in the Oxygen docuseries, “Smiley Face Killers: The Hunt for Justice.”
While Austin police investigate the deaths, city officials have also addressed safety concerns about the waterfront, installing new fencing and weighing proposals ranging from adding lights or increasing police patrols.
“From the outside in, not having been there, it appears to have been targeted, just because of what the numbers say and the location, all in Lady Bird Lake,” Gannon said.
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A member of the Austin Police Department stands watch during the Gold Cup semifinal match between the United States and Qatar on July 29, 2021 at Q2 stadium in Austin, Texas. (Nick Tre. Smith/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The Austin City Council discussed potential upgrades at and near the Rainey Street Trailhead, between the nightlife district and the river bank, including adding park ranger patrols and stationing emergency responders in the area, FOX 7 Austin reported earlier this month.
Pugh, the man whose son was found in the brush after vanishing in 2019, called for cameras to be installed in the area.
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Mitchell Gutierrez, whose brother drowned after going missing from Rainey Street in 2018, said at the meeting he believes 12 people have died in similar fashion “by his count” since his brother’s death.
His brother, Martin Gutierrez, was an experienced swimmer, according to Hammonds.
“He had swam competitively in high school,” he said. “I can’t understand how somebody like that would just fall in the water and drown.”
Fox News’ Chris Eberhart and Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.
