When social media cries serial killer: The case of Houston’s bayou bodies

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00:00That man's body was found in White Oak Bayou.

00:03This is the seventh such discovery in just the past month.

00:07In 2023, it examined nine bodies in Houston bayous,

00:1120 bodies in 2024, and so far this year, 24 bodies.

00:16If trends hold, Houston is on track to log more than 30 bayou-related deaths before the year is out.

00:22And some Houstonians and true crime aficionados are putting on their detective hats

00:27and speculating about the worst-case scenario.

00:30You can't possibly keep saying that they're not connected when they just keep showing up and showing up.

00:39I can't believe you, Houston. Another body was found at Buffalo Bayou Park.

00:45So we're just going to pretend that there's not a serial on a liver in Houston, Texas, dumping bodies in the bayou?

00:51It's very frustrating to me to be at home, watch the news or social media,

00:58and see people spread what I know to be false.

01:04Mayor John Whitmire's frustration is ringing out across the nation's fourth-largest city.

01:09As of his September press conference, 24 bodies had been found in Houston bayous this year.

01:14If that rate holds, there will be 32 bayou-related deaths in 2025, a 60% increase from last year.

01:22Enough is enough of misinformation, wild speculation by either social media,

01:31elected officials, candidates, the media.

01:36We do not have any evidence that there is a serial killer loose in Houston, Texas.

01:44The reason Internet sleuths are leaning toward the idea of a serial killer loose in Houston?

01:50The rise in popularity of the true crime genre of podcasts, books, and TV shows.

01:55In 2024, 19.1 million Americans said they listened to true crime podcasts at least once a week.

02:02That's a nearly three-fold increase since 2019.

02:07Meanwhile, 41% of Americans between 18 and 29 say they regularly listen to true crime shows.

02:13That age group also happens to be big-time social media users.

02:17There's no shortage of so-called experts, and I'm putting experts in quotation marks,

02:22who pipe in on this.

02:23My name is Kim Rosmo.

02:25I'm a professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University.

02:30Rosmo is a former police detective who has spent decades researching serial killers.

02:35Earlier this year, he published research on the Rainy Street Ripper,

02:39a similar conspiracy theory linking the 200 drowning deaths in an Austin, Texas lake over the last two decades.

02:45His analysis of the situation directly relates to concerns in Houston.

02:49Rosmo's research notes homicidal drownings account for only 0.2% of all murders in the United States,

02:57most involving children killed by their parents.

02:59Rosmo added that serial killers account for just a small portion of all murders,

03:03and they almost never drown their victims.

03:06Drowning is really difficult.

03:07If you walk yourself through the stages of how you would drown somebody,

03:12it just doesn't make much sense at all to do it that way.

03:16And even if someone was trying to do this, you would have a lot of failed attempts,

03:21and you would have reports of those failed attempts with descriptions of the offender.

03:25And it's just really, really rare.

03:28And it's not even, it doesn't even fit the motivation of serial killers.

03:32These are often crimes of sex and power.

03:34So that doesn't make sense either.

03:37Texas is a massive state, streaked with rivers, bayous, and Gulf Coastline.

03:41As a result, the state's drowning rate is 8% higher than the national average.

03:45In a city of 2.4 million people with more than 2,500 miles of bayou,

03:51not every drowning death makes the news.

03:54But once two dozen are reported, it's hard to stop the rumor mill.

03:58True crime fans are drawing connections among the incidents.

04:01And research shows they're also 4.4 times more likely to call in a tip

04:05or offer other information to law enforcement to solve a case.

04:09But there are downsides.

04:11There's four harms.

04:12One, resources that could be used to solving a drowning problem.

04:15Two, are spent on chasing, you know, a phantom serial killer.

04:20Two, those police resources that just could be used to solve other real murders.

04:26Third, is you're re-victimizing the family members.

04:30Oh, you know, your son drowned, but now we think it's a murder.

04:33And then they're all going, oh my God, all these people are saying,

04:35you know, our son was a victim of a murder.

04:37What's going on here?

04:39And then finally, you're unnecessarily increasing fear levels.

04:43Our fear levels should be consistent with real risk, not with social media, you know, hype.

04:48Rossmo pointed to onlookers who draw the serial killer connection because the majority of bodies

04:53recovered in Houston, 88%, have been men.

04:57But that's not the thread you might think it is.

05:00In the Lone Star State, 78% of drowning victims are men.

05:04Rossmo chalks this perceived connection up to social media apophenia,

05:09the tendency to find meaningful connections and patterns that don't exist.

05:14Mayor Whitmire has been adamant.

05:16Let me say that again.

05:17There is no evidence that there is a serial killer loose on the streets of Houston.

05:24If there was, you would hear it from me first.

05:27But his last public comment on the issue was more than a month ago.

05:31We don't have enough information to know whether there is a serial killer or not.

05:36I'm Lisa Olson, and I'm a journalist, and I'm author of The Scientist and the Serial Killer.

05:41Olson's latest book is about the Candyman killings,

05:44when Dean Corll murdered at least 29 teenage boys in Houston and Pasadena, Texas, in the early 70s.

05:50The book follows forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick's quest to identify the unidentified victims.

05:56In America, we have like 40,000 people in our country who are unidentified.

06:00It seems like an unacceptably high number for a nation with so much forensic science and so much tech.

06:07And a lot of those cases represent unsolved crimes.

06:12But there are still some holes in the Houston Bayou serial killer story for Olson.

06:16There are different ways that serial killers are identified.

06:19I mean, sometimes they actually want to be identified as a serial killer.

06:22You know, they have signatures, they write notes to the press.

06:26Some serial killers in our history have done that.

06:29Some serial killers in Texas dumped all of the bodies in the same place,

06:33like the so-called Killing Fields, Texas Killing Fields killer,

06:37who put three bodies in the same spot on Calder Road, the same exact place, not just any bayou anywhere.

06:44Serial killer or not, Olson says it is important to figure out why so many bodies are washing up in the city's bayous.

06:50The mayor saying that homeless people might be pushing their friends into the river

06:54because they don't want to bury them is really alarming to me

06:56because it's when people are not counted by society and their deaths are not investigated,

07:02or, you know, when even their friends think it's okay to follow them in the river,

07:06that crimes get covered up and crimes don't get discovered in the first place.

07:10The sentiment is shared by city council member Letitia Plummer,

07:13who has been vocal about solving the mystery and ensuring safety around the waterways.

07:17I'm seeing, you know, five, so just five or six of Bray's Bayou.

07:24If we can kind of put these addresses in a Google sheet and kind of see how close they are,

07:30if we're seeing more bodies found maybe in one specific area, you know, would you put signage up?

07:35We have to remember, these are people.

07:38These are daughters, sons, grandparents, cousins, aunties.

07:44These are people, and the fact that we make assumptions about how they passed is just not acceptable.

07:55For Straight Arrow News, I'm Maggie Gordon.

07:58For more in-depth reporting, download the Straight Arrow News app or head to san.com.

08:02For more in-depth reporting, download the Straight Arrow News app or back to san.com.

08:05For more in-depth reporting, download the Straight Arrow News app or head to the Straight Arrow News app.

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