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

That man's body was found in White Oak Bayou

This is the seventh such discovery in just the past month. In 2023, it examined nine bodies in Houston bayous

20 bodies in 2024, and so far this year, 24 bodies. If trends hold, Houston is on track to log more than 30 bayou-related deaths before the year is out

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

and speculating about the worst-case scenario. you can't possibly keep saying that they're not connected when they just keep showing up

and showing up i can't believe you houston another body was found at buffalo bayou park

so we're just going to pretend that there's not a cereal on a liver in houston texas dumping bodies

in the bayou it's very frustrating to me to be at home watch the news or social media

and see people spread what I know to be false. Mayor John Whitmire's frustration is ringing out across the nation's fourth largest city

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

If that rate holds, there will be 32 bayou-related deaths in 2025, a 60 percent increase from last year

Enough is enough of misinformation, wild speculation by either social media, elected officials, candidates, the media

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

The reason internet sleuths are leaning toward the idea of a serial killer loose in Houston

The rise in popularity of the true crime genre of podcasts, books, and TV shows

In 2024 19 million Americans said they listened to true crime podcasts at least once a week That a nearly threefold increase since 2019

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

That age group also happens to be big time social media users. There's no shortage of so-called experts, and I'm putting experts in quotation marks, who pipe in on this

My name is Kim Rosmo. I'm a professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University

Rosmo is a former police detective who has spent decades researching serial killers

Earlier this year, he published research on the Rainy Street Ripper, a similar conspiracy theory linking the 200 drowning deaths in an Austin, Texas lake over the last two decades

His ysis of the situation directly relates to concerns in Houston. Rosmo's research notes homicidal drownings account for only 0.2% of all murders in the United States

most involving children killed by their parents. Rosmo added that serial killers account for just a small portion of all murders

and they almost never drown their victims. Drowning is really difficult. If you walk yourself through the stages of how you would drown somebody

it just doesn't make much sense at all to do it that way. And even if someone was trying to do this, you would have a lot of failed attempts

And you would have reports of those failed attempts with descriptions of the offender

And it's just really, really rare. And it's not even, it doesn't even fit the motivation of serial killers

These are often crimes of sex and power. So that doesn't make sense either

Texas is a massive state, streaked with rivers, bayous, and Gulf Coastline

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

In a city of 2.4 million people with more than 2,500 miles of bayou, not every drowning

death makes the news. But once two dozen are reported it hard to stop the rumor mill True crime fans are drawing connections among the incidents and research shows they also 4 times more likely to call in a tip or offer other information to law enforcement to solve a case

But there are downsides. There's four harms. One, resources that could be used to solving a drowning problem are spent on chasing, you know, a phantom serial killer

Two, those police resources that just could be used to solve other real murders

Third is you're re-victimizing the family members. Oh, you know, your son drowned, but now we think it's a murder

And then they're all going, oh my God, all these people are saying, you know, our son was a victim of a murder

What's going on here? And then finally, you're unnecessarily increasing fear levels

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

Rossmo pointed to onlookers who draw the serial killer connection because the majority of bodies recovered in Houston, 88%, have been men

But that's not the thread you might think it is. In the Lone Star State, 78% of drowning victims are men

Rossmo chalks this perceived connection up to social media apophenia, the tendency to find meaningful connections and patterns that don't exist

Mayor Whitmire has been adamant. Let me say that again. There is no evidence that there is a serial killer loose on the streets of Houston

If there was, you would hear it from me first. But his last public comment on the issue was more than a month ago

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

I'm Lisa Olson and I'm a journalist and I'm author of The Scientist and The Serial Killer

Olsen's latest book is about the Candyman killings, when Dean Corll murdered at least 29 teenage boys

in Houston and Pasadena, Texas, in the early 70s. The book follows forensic anthropologist Sharon Derrick's

quest to identify the unidentified victims. In America we have like 40 people in our country who are unidentified It seems like an unacceptably high number for a nation with so much forensic science and so much tech And a lot of those cases represent unsolved crimes

But there are still some holes in the Houston Bayou serial killer story for Olson

There are different ways that serial killers are identified. I mean, sometimes they actually

want to be identified as a serial killer. You know, they have signatures, they write notes to

the press. Some serial killers in our history have done that. Some serial killers in Texas

dumped all of the bodies in the same place, like the so-called Killing Fields, Texas Killing Fields

killer, who put three bodies in the same spot on Calder Road, the same exact place, not just any

bayou anywhere. Serial killer or not, Olson says it is important to figure out why so many bodies

are washing up in the city's bayous. The mayor saying that homeless people might be pushing their

friends into the river because they don't want to bury them is really alarming to me because it's when people are not counted by society and their deaths are not investigated or, you know

when even their friends think it's okay to fall in the river that crimes get covered up and

crimes don't get discovered in the first place. The sentiment is shared by city council member

Letitia Plummer, who has been vocal about solving the mystery and ensuring safety around the waterways

I'm seeing, you know, five, so just five or six of Brace Bayou

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

If we're seeing more bodies found maybe in one specific area, you know, would you put signage up

We have to remember these are people. These are daughters, sons, grandparents, cousins, aunties

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

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Maggie Gordon. For more in-depth reporting, download the Straight Arrow News app or head to san.com