Plot Synopsis

SMILEY FACE KILLERS: THE HUNT FOR JUSTICE is a true-crime documentary series that follows an active private investigation spearheaded by retired NYPD Detective Kevin Gannon and his veteran team of investigators -- Anthony Duarte, Mike 'Mikey' Donovan and D. Lee 'Doc' Gilbertson -- as they work with victims' families and top forensic experts to further investigate and question that the country's most notorious string of mysterious, accidental drownings that aren't accidents, but homicides. And they could all be connected to a larger theory of The Smiley Face Killers.

Since 1997, hundreds of college-aged men have mysteriously drowned after a night out drinking with friends. Their bodies have been found in clusters around the country, and the victims are eerily similar -- they're all athletic, academic achievers. In addition, near where many of the bodies are recovered is one distinct mark: graffiti of a smiley face. All of the drownings have been individually classified as accidental or undetermined and have not been investigated as possibly related crimes. There are grieving families of these young men who are convinced that there is something more sinister at play, and desperately search for answers with Gannon and the team, who have dedicated the past 12 years of their retirement to finding justice for these cases. Their goal is to gather enough evidence to convince local authorities to reclassify and investigate these deaths as homicides. Only then can the team attempt to establish a possible connection between these deaths to further their theory that the young men are victims of a calculated group known as The Smiley Face Killers.

In the 90-minute season opener, "Dakota James," the teams investigates the mysterious 2017 drowning death of a graduate student in Pittsburgh and explore whether the case is connected to the Smiley Face Killer theory they've been investigating for the past decade.
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On Saturday, February 23, 2019 at 7pm ET/PT, Oxygen premiered the season finale of SMILEY FACE KILLERS: THE HUNT FOR JUSTICE. In the season ender, "Todd Geib," a team of retired detectives investigates the 2005 death of a man who was found in a rural Michigan lake 21 days after he went missing. With little decomposition to the body, the team believes the death could be the work of the Smiley Face Killers.