The (smiley) face of a killer?

Could a national gang of killers that leaves smiley-face calling cards be getting away with murdering dozens of male college students by making all the deaths look like accidents?

That’s what two retired New York police detectives think, after spending their own money to link as many as 40 drowning deaths of otherwise healthy young men, many of them athletes.

“This is a nationwide organization that revels in killing young men," Prof. D. Lee Gilbertson of St. Cloud State University said in a report filed Tuesday for TODAY by NBC’s Lee Cowan.

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Two New York detectives and a professor have been investigating whether a nationwide string of murders of college-age men could have been committed by a single gang, linked by a smiley face. NBC's Lee Cowan reports.

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Most of what the detectives are calling murders occurred in the Midwest during the winter months. Almost all involved popular athletes with good grades. Most had been drinking before they disappeared and their bodies subsequently found in near-frozen bodies of water.

The link they think they’ve found is a smiley-face symbol drawn near where many of the drowning victims’ bodies have been discovered. - ms