Did the Smiley Face Killer Strike on Halloween?
By: Lisa Marie Fuqua
Tags: Crime, Halloween, Murder, True Crime, Serial Killers

Was it a bar fight that got out of hand? Or something much more sinister? Did Chris Jenkins cross paths with the Smiley Face Killer Halloween night?

Lone Tree Bar and Grill via MurderFile

Halloween night 2002, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A group of college friends from the University of Minnesota dressed up and went out to celebrate. They were at the Lone Tree Bar and Grill, when one member of the group got separated, Chris Jenkins.

The story goes that sometime after midnight, Chris spilled a drink on his pants by accident. But the security team thought he was so intoxicated that he urinated on himself, so they removed him from the bar. And the bouncer was told not to let him back in.

Chris had been wearing a Native American Halloween costume without pockets and had just been kicked out without his coat, in the 20-degree temperatures. He had given his cell phone and wallet to his girlfriend Ashley Rice, who was still inside.

So now Chris found himself outside in the freezing temperatures, without any means of getting home. Since another friend had driven them to the bar.

The last anyone reported seeing Chris was that he was walking from the bar heading north. But when he never showed up back at his place or contacted anyone, he was reported missing.

Four months of not a word from Chris, or any clues to his disappearance had not just his family and friends on edge, but the college campus.

Upper St. Anthony Falls Dam via WikiMediaCommons

On February 27, 2003, a body was spotted floating in the Mississippi River. The body had been wedged in branches of a fallen tree near the Upper St. Anthony Falls Dam.

After pulling it from the water and performing an autopsy, it would be revealed it was Chris Jenkins. He had still been wearing his Halloween costume, so it was assumed he died the night he went missing.

His official cause of death was listed as “undetermined.” But the police believed it was an accidental drowning. His family didn’t think this and was forced to launch their own independent investigation.

Which would turn up quite a few discrepancies to the official report made by the police?

1 The private investigator started with retracing Chris’s steps that Halloween night. Which took him to the Lone Tree Bar and Grill. Where suspiciously now all the staff said Chris left on his own, that he wasn’t kicked out. Then the owner issued a gag order so his employees could not speak to anyone without a company attorney present.

2 The night of Halloween, an off-duty police officer named Mike Casey was in the bar. He was working security in the area. He knew Ashley, Chris’s girlfriend, he had actually loaned her one of his uniform shirts for her Halloween costume of a sexy police officer. During the night, she introduced Chris to Mike.

A rumor going around at the time was that Mike Casey had told the security supervisor at the bar to have Chris removed. Because he wanted Chris out of the picture that night to flirt with Ashley. Then later, after Chris was gone, he gave Ashley a ride home.

The Minneapolis PD never even questioned Mike Casey formerly. When asked why Casey wasn’t questioned, even though he had driven the victim’s girlfriend home and might know valuable information. They said, “He’s a married man with children. We don’t want to break up a family.”

3 Retracing Chris’s steps, the private investigator realized that the route home for Chris would have taken him over the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. He found that the Federal Reserve Bank had two outside security cameras facing in that direction. But when the bank reviewed the footage, there was no sign of Chris. So he had not started to walk home.

4 The family knew they needed to try and find out where Chris went if they were ever going to find out what happened to him. They hired a K-9 unit, and two different bloodhounds tracked Chris’s scent from the Lone Tree Bar to a restaurant across from the bar, Times Square Pizza & Subs.

From there, the bloodhounds each tracked Chris’s scent further to an underground parking garage, next to the Pizza shop. The scent came to a stop around the parking stalls number 89 and 90.

On Halloween night, the bouncer from the Lone Tree Bar and Grill had been parking in one of those spots. The bloodhounds also found a hint of Chris on the vehicle that had been parked there that night.

With a possible scene to investigate, a search for evidence began. The private investigators would recover blood droplets, a red feather fragment, and red string that could be parts of the headband Chris had been wearing that night.

5 The private investigator started looking more closely at the movement around the Pizza shop and garage the night of Halloween. Several people had seen a group of 10 or more people attacking someone in front of Times Square Pizza & Subs that night. But no one was sure if it had been Chris.

6 From the pathologist’s report, it is known that Chris’s blood-alcohol level was .12 percent, so he was not out of it drunk. Test also showed traces of the chemical GHB in his system, which is used to sedate people and is referred to as a date rape drug.

7 The pathologist that had performed the autopsy also noted some strange inconsistencies with the body, if he had drowned. First, he was found with his arms crossed in front of him, which is odd for victims who fall into the water and drown. They are usually found with their arms out at their sides.

Their clothing is usually disheveled too. But Chris’s shirt was still tucked into his drawstring pants, and the slip-on moccasins were still on his feet. Which led the pathologist to believe that Chris was dead and rigor mortis had set in when he was placed into the water.

8 When he was pulled from the river, there was a clump of hair in his left hand. This was never tested. It had been filed away after being labeled “Foreign Matter in Left Hand.” Finally, years later, it was tested, it proved to be Chris’s own hair.

9 Lack of bruising seemed to throw the family off. Chris was an avid lacrosse goalie and was usually covered in bruises on his legs and arms. He had played 2 games, and been to practice days before he vanished. So there most likely should have been bruises on his body. Since there wasn’t, his family wondered if he’d been kept alive somewhere for a few days, before being killed and disposed of?

10 A hydrologist who studied the Mississippi River didn’t believe that Chris’s body could have been in the water for 4 months, and not have been spotted. He researched the temperatures in the area and found that the river didn’t freeze over until January. Also, the area under the 3rd Avenue Bridge, where Chris’s body was found, had been combed for weeks after he disappeared.

Four years after Chris went missing, and then turned up in the river, his family finally got the police to reopen the investigation. It was after a new police chief took over, that he sat down with them and viewed the evidence they had collected. It was only then that Chris’s death was reclassified from accidental drowning to homicide.

After this, an informant came forward with new information. He said that he had seen someone he knew throw Chris off the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. But this seems unlikely to anyone who studied the case. If Chris had been thrown off the bridge, he would have hit a steel support beam and metal cables on his way down. His body would have shown multiple injuries, which it didn’t.

To date, no one has been charged in the murder of Chris Jenkins. Some speculate it was a fight that got out of hand.

Others believe it could be part of the Smiley Face Killings that took the lives of many college-aged men in the Midwest. Their bodies are found in the water after a night of drinking, and a smiley face painted nearby. But without knowing where Chris went into the water, it’s hard to look for the smiley face graffiti.

Come back all month for new Halloween True Crime Stories!