Series on 'Smiley Face Killers' shines light on Elgin man's mysterious death

The Smiley Face Killers - a much-discussed, -debated and (some say) -debunked theory about a band of serial murderers targeting young men near waterways across America - are back in the public eye, thanks to a new Oxygen television network documentary series examining the premise.

And that means a nearly two-decade-old mystery with suburban roots is back in the national spotlight this weekend.

Brian Welzien, a 21-year-old college student from Elgin, vanished from outside a downtown Chicago hotel in the early morning of Jan. 1, 2000, while celebrating the new year with friends. His body was discovered 2½ months later on a Lake Michigan beach in Gary, Indiana.

Now, Brian's death is one of six being explored in the series "Smiley Face Killers: The Hunt for Justice." His case is featured in the fourth episode of the series, which airs at 6 p.m. Saturday.

The show dives into a yearslong investigation into the Smiley Face theory led by retired New York City police detective Kevin Gannon and his team. They believe Brian and as many as 200 other young men might have fallen prey to a serial killer network that today operates over the dark web. The killers abduct, drug and kill their victims on land before dumping their bodies in the water, according to the theory.

Near many of the locations where the victims' bodies were recovered, investigators found graffiti of a smiley face.

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'A lot of discrepancies'

Mike Donovan, a former NYPD detective and one of the investigators featured on the show, told us Thursday there are too many unanswered questions about Brian's case to believe the official speculation - that after becoming sick from drinking too much, he strayed from his friends and fell into the icy water.

For example, he said, though Brian's body wasn't found for 77 days, it showed only about a week's worth of decomposition. And while tens of thousands were in downtown Chicago celebrating the new millennium, police were unable to find any witnesses who saw Brian wandering from the hotel to the lake.

And Brian's path from the hotel to the lake would have required him to cross several major roads, difficult to imagine for someone reportedly as intoxicated as he was.

"The people I spoke to didn't have many answers," Donovan said. "That was a problem for me as an investigator. There are a lot of discrepancies."

Brian's mother, Stephany Welzien, told the Daily Herald in 2008 that she also doesn't believe he wandered into the water on his own. In a clip from Saturday's show posted online, she describes her loss as a wound that appears healed on the outside but still feels fresh on the inside.

"I'm not going to let the evil that destroyed Brian destroy me," she said. "Just not going to let it happen."

The Smiley Face detectives say their ultimate goal is to gather enough new evidence and draw enough attention to the cases that the authorities will reopen them as homicide investigations.

<h3 class="leadin">Smiley skeptics

Not everyone is on board with the Smiley Face theory. Police departments and medical examiners across the country have rejected the idea, and even the FBI weighed in a decade ago.

"To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers," Supervisory Special Agent Richard J. Kolko said in 2008. "The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drownings."

And in 2010, the Center for Homicide Research issued a 12-page report listing 18 problems with the theory, including evidence some of the smiley faces linked to deaths were there long before the victim's body was recovered, a lack of evidence the victims suffered trauma, and no evidence supporting beliefs the victims were drugged before their deaths.

<h3 class="leadin">Honor guard

Congratulations to Lake County correctional officer Dionne Dawson, who was honored Monday as Correctional Officer of the Year by the Illinois Sheriff's Association.

Dawson began her career with the Lake County sheriff's office in October 2010 and performs exceptionally well in all areas of the correctional facility, according to the sheriff's office.

Among the highlights of her 2018 was helping save the life of a person who suffered an opioid overdose while being booked into the jail. Dawson helped administer four doses of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone to revive the person.

"There's no doubt she survived because of (correctional officer) Dawson's lifesaving efforts," according to the sheriff's office.

Dawson also took part in the 2018 Point-in-Time Homeless Count, during which volunteers searched for, interviewed and aided unsheltered homeless people in Lake County.

<h3 class="leadin">Break-in news

Here's a state ranking on which we Illinoisans won't mind being near the bottom: According to the website safehome.org, our state ranks 35th in the nation when it comes to break-ins.

The state saw 339.5 burglaries per 100,000 people in 2017, according to the home security website, which crunched data from the FBI to come up with the findings.

Where should you feel safest leaving your doors unlocked? Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, New Hampshire and New York had the fewest break-ins per capita.

Where might you want to invest in a good deadbolt or home alarm system? New Mexico, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas had the most burglaries per capita.

<h3 class="leadin">Parking for the pantry

Good job by the Hanover Park Police Department - and many of the community's parking scofflaws - for turning a public nuisance into a public good.

Through the department's Food for Fines program, which between Dec. 17 and Jan. 10 allowed parking ticket recipients to donate food items instead of paying fines, the department collected 1,686 usable food items for 158 parking tickets. That's more than twice the 884 cans of food collected last year.

The items were donated to the Hanover Township Food Pantry.

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