My watching of crime shows has now officially started freaking me out.

The "Smiley Face Killer" story from yesterday has been haunting me and leaving me in a foul mood. The notion of a creepy and shadowy murder gang in the upper Midwest is one of those things that I usually associate with my late-night AM radio listening to Art Bell (the show he started is in fact where this came from first - ugh.) I have allowed myself to get creeped out many times by that awful/excellent show, and in this case, I have to say it fits in the all the crime TV I have been watching, and even some of the true crime reading I have been doing.

In this case, it is the word "Sinsinawa" that bugs me. Apparently this word was tagged at a murder scene in Michigan, and the investigators didn't know what it meant until much later when they realized that a murder scene in East Dubuque, IL took place on Sinsinawa Avenue. It does seem to great a coincidence to be nothing - whether it proves the entirety of this story I can't say. That certainly isn't the only thing.

The fact that a bunch of jocks in small midwestern college towns end up getting separated from their group when out at bars, and then end up being found in the local river - often the Mississippi - may not seem like proof of anything either, but 40 of them? There are a ton of these type cases, and I gotta say, the odds of them all being unable to find their way home, and somehow walking into a huge river also seems odd.

I couldn't stop reading about the story yesterday. The cases all seemed to take place during the school year. None were in summer. Couldn't this be some small Midwestern school basketball or wrestling coach or player or booster who travels to these small college towns for some sports thing and ends up out in the weekend millieu? Almost all these places are along major rail lines that connect - there are organized criminal gangs on the trains for the last decades (the idea of the friendly railroad tramp is long a myth - there are lots of no-fun people out there for the most part.) Most are also along Interstate 94. Again, I am just letting myself get caught up in something I know very little about. The picture of the smiley face they show is disturbing. It got stuck in my melon. I seem to rotate through some story like this every few years and they always end up being like seeing Goatse for the first time - ya just wish you had remained among the unknowing.

The worst part is that the place I wrote about in East Dubuque IL, where I took my nephews for the famed Chili Dogs, is on the row of bars the story refers to, and indeed, Mulgrews is on Sinsinawa Avenue in East Dubuque. That really bothers me. My folks live close enough to East Dubuque that I go through there on occasion, even though I haven't lived in the region for a decade. Like I say, I took my nephews there for chili dogs dammit! The fact that I too have gone out drinking there isn't creepy since there is no chance I would have been mistaken for a college athlete, but the idea of a creepy killer gang doing their work in that area is gonna keep on bugging me.

Aaaaaargh! I gotta get rid of my damn TV again! I need to read only uplifting poetry from here on out! I would rather be unable to get Music Box Dancer out of my head, or this, or this, or even this! I must take the time to "crowd out" the crap in my mind with uplifting stuff, or even stuff that happens to be less hideous. Until then, I gotta have this one cycling through my mind. It totally sucks. I am taking suggestions!