Digital Social Hour
How Killers Exploit Police Loopholes to Escape | Alex Cody Foster DSH #1190
Wed, 19 Feb
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How do killers exploit police loopholes to escape justice? 🕵️♂️ Tune in to this captivating episode of the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly, featuring Alex Cody Foster—a true crime expert and writer with jaw-dropping insights into the mind-boggling world of serial killers and law enforcement blind spots. 🚨 Alex shares chilling accounts of the Smiley Face Killer phenomenon, the dark web of cult-like killer groups, and the investigative loopholes that help these criminals evade capture. From his harrowing personal experiences to uncovering conspiracies that could change history, this episode is packed with valuable insights you won’t hear anywhere else. 😱 Don’t miss Alex’s stories about his own tumultuous journey, encounters with criminals, and his groundbreaking work on "We Hunt Serial Killers." Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories! 🚀🎙️ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 01:32 - Smiley Face Killers 02:38 - Your Mother 06:27 - Your Grandfather 09:56 - How Alex Found Himself 13:07 - Alex’s Last Experience 17:01 - Alex’s First Ghostwriting Gig 19:38 - Empathy in Ghostwriting 22:10 - Transition to Cinematography 23:32 - Long Island Serial Killer Case 29:40 - FBI Report Insights 31:40 - Netflix Series Analysis 34:30 - Trump and Missing Children 35:40 - John McAfee 38:00 - Alex’s Premonition of McAfee’s Death 44:50 - Alex’s Book Deal with Bitcoin Founder 46:56 - John McAfee Discussion 48:40 - The Rat 52:20 - Monetizing True Crime 57:16 - The Dark Side of True Crime 58:28 - Exploring Karma 59:30 - We Hunt Serial Killers 1:03:15 - What's Next for You 1:04:07 - Future Projects 1:04:10 - Wrapping Up 1:04:12 - Importance of Authenticity 1:04:50 - Outro APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [email protected] GUEST: Alex Cody Foster https://www.instagram.com/alexfosterghostwriter/ https://www.alexfosterghostwriter.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ #horrorstories #patrickmcneill #kevingannon #scarystories #truecrime
Chapter 1: Who are the Smiley Face Killers?
All right, guys. Alex Cody Foster here in Vegas today. Long flight from Maine, right? It was. It actually had a bunch of delays, and it ended up being like 12 and a half hours. Holy crap. Was it snowing out there?
Yeah, it was snowing. They had to de-ice the plane. We were running out of fuel when we were coming in because Trump was here. Oh, wow. So they wouldn't allow us to land because there was so much air traffic. So we had to reroute because we were running out of fuel. Damn. Back to Phoenix, get fuel, and then come back here. Dude, that's crazy. It's been a shit show, man.
I went to Minneapolis before. I had to do two extra days because I had to overnight in different cities because of delays. But it's worth it, man. It's fun. I love travel. I love it. Were you out in Minneapolis doing interviews or what were you doing there?
Yeah, I was there for... We have serial killers. It's the project that I started in 2024. And there are a lot of cases in Minneapolis and La Crosse that belong to the alleged smiley face killer phenomenon. And so we were out there, actually on behalf of iHeart Radio, we just got a green light that I'm doing a show with.
So we're out there interviewing a lot of victims' families and eyewitnesses and stuff. Yeah, so smiley face killers, how many of them are there allegedly?
uh that is a very good question so my former partner and friend kevin gannon he's the detective who broke the story back in 1997 with the case of patrick mcneil and he believes that there are over a thousand members yeah that's crazy thousand members i haven't been able to verify that um
but I know that there is a coordinated group effort and that these guys have been working together for a long time. So I think that there are at least dozens of members. And I think originally it was just a small group of killers who sort of found each other during the advent of the internet age in the late nineties. and started working together and killing people.
That's way more than I expected. I thought it'd be like a handful.
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Chapter 2: What is Alex Cody Foster's personal story?
Yeah. That's pretty scary, man. When you take all of the potential cases and put them together, it's over 700. So it could be the biggest serial killer cult in history. Whoa. That is crazy. Speaking of cults, Oh yeah. That's fun stuff. Perfect segue into your mother, man. So was it your mother and father or just your mother?
Just my mom. Yeah. Just my mom. I, uh, I think, yeah, I talked about it a bit. You probably heard on the Mike Ritland show. Um, had a pretty weird upbringing. I say pretty weird. And then other people say that's a trauma response. Just say you had a shit child. Oh yeah, you're right. So, you know, it was, it was pretty bad. And that's why I moved out of my house when I was 15.
I moved in a college campus with my, my girlfriend at the time, who's a college student. And, 15, almost 16, by the way. I was like on the cusp. Yeah. I know each state is different, right?
Yeah. So, yeah, but my mother, she tried, but she wasn't the best a lot of the time. And she tried to kill me one time and that created a falling out, obviously. And she also joined a cult. Yeah. And I haven't talked to her since. It's been like five years or something. So how old were you when she joined it?
It was recently? It was like eight years ago, 32. So yeah, I was in my twenties. Wow. My career was just kind of like kicking off and you know, I lost my mom to the, to the cult. I wonder how they convince her at her age, because usually cults, I feel like they start younger, right?
She's always been sort of culty. She's had this, I don't know, this predilection towards different belief systems. You know, like there are some people who they just crave some sense of purpose and belonging. I mean, we all do. We all crave that. And that's why we have our family units and, you know, our partners and our friends, you But some people crave it, I think, in a very negative aspect.
And this makes them go off the deep end and give all of their wealth, all of their belongings up, everything that they have to the higher power, which is usually a human being trying to fleece them. So I think that's really the mentality of most cults. And that's why certain impressionable people go with it hook, line, and sinker. My mom being one of them. Damn, that's scary, man. It's okay.
I don't know. She's having a grand old time, I bet. Do you keep tabs or no? No. You don't even try to talk to her at this point?
She is living in our old family home, which was repoed by the bank like three years ago or something like that. She stopped paying her mortgage. And so technically she doesn't own the home anymore, but she's been squatting in it. And she hasn't left the home in over a year. Holy crap. Yeah, she doesn't even go outside. What? Yeah, she's afraid to go outside.
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Chapter 3: How did Alex Cody Foster get into ghostwriting?
Because she had, yeah, she had fleeced a bunch of old people of their retirement money or something and some scams. She was always doing that sort of thing. And so she was wanted by the law. She saw my dad, perfect opportunity. Got to thank her in some way because that's how I was born. And then escaped to America and never went back. Damn. Yeah. That is some crazy family history, man.
Yeah. And I went over there. She never knew her father. He disappeared when she was two years old. Whoa. Never heard from him again. And so I went to Germany when I was 21. And with my cousin, we tracked down what happened to her father. He actually... He abandoned her and her sister and their mother and went to a new part of Germany and started a whole new family.
And he had, during World War II, had seen some atrocities, some really terrible things. So he kind of like lost his mind. And as far as we knew, the last like 12 years of his life, he spent in an asylum. And it was around that time that I had lost my mind from some crazy shit.
that I experienced in Los Angeles as like a homeless kid and which set me up for this journey today, what I do now, that I was terrified that maybe I had inherited my grandfather's mental illness because my mother clearly had it. She had whatever it is, she's never been tested. But that was a big fear for a while until what I was struggling with went away and it never came back, thank God.
Yeah, knock on wood, you never know. Yeah, it sounds like psychotic episodes or something, right? Yeah, exactly, yep. Yeah, I was actually, same thing happened to me. My grandfather was wild. Really? He physically abused my dad. Oh, no. So he had some mental trauma. I'm sure the same thing happened to him. So I was scared that I was gonna come out like kind of messed up too.
I think when you have a really strong constitution, I could be wrong about this, but this is my belief, is that when you have a strong constitution and a good heart and a good head on your shoulders, you can kind of prevent that genealogical shit that skips generations and comes to haunt you in your own life, I think.
Really like we have a sense of power that may not be scientifically viable or understood, but it's there. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. I think the odds, like if you're just like higher IQ, the odds are higher, but you can kind of mitigate that, you know? I don't think I fit into that category. Well, you just look at a lot of smart people deal with mental health issues, I've noticed. Yep, big time.
I think they just get in their own head. They do. And they have a predisposition. A lot of their family members, I think, have that as well. They have super high IQs. They're very intelligent. And they're overthinkers. I mean, I'm an overthinker. I know how deep and dark that rabbit hole can get. Never ending. No.
I used to overthink every conversation. Me too. I used to analyze like, oh, they reacted that way. Why'd they do that? What stopped it? That's a good question. I don't think it was a specific thing. I think it was just a bit of microdosing, a bit of self-reflection, realizing I had trauma growing up that I didn't know I had because I thought my life was normal, similar to you.
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges of writing and empathy?
Exactly. Because you don't talk to kids about how they're raised. So you just assume it's normal.
It's a cyclical nature of trauma, right? And I did something similar. Dude, I was totally gone. For two and a half years, my mind was gone. Wow. And so I was just like traveling the world, this homeless, penniless vagabond, trying to find some semblance of self again. And I couldn't because I was running away from
myself, my selfhood, whatever the thing that was haunting me was, which I found out, I was just running from it. So I was like, let's go live in South America. Let's go live in Europe. Let's go hitchhike around America for six months, you know, because I was trying to escape myself. And when I realized that's what was happening, I was on this four month journey along the inside passage to Alaska.
I started meditating every day and just coming to grips with the fucked up childhood that I had that I didn't really know I had. And with the crazy things that happened to me when I was on the road. I think you saw in the other interview, I believe that I met a serial killer who wanted to rape and murder me. I prevented it, but that experience changed my life.
And I couldn't sleep on the streets of LA because you couldn't escape, you couldn't go anywhere. You're naked because you can't sleep inside a building with four walls and a ceiling. You're literally exposed to the elements. You're on a sidewalk, people driving by, they can see you. And I thought this guy would find me. So I didn't sleep for six nights. And then ironically, it was so weird.
I was climbing the wisdom tree in the Hollywood Hills. That's why it's ironic. That's where I lost my mind. It just like shifted. And then I was, I had perpetual PTSD for two and a half years, just fight or flight. Everything terrified me. Every moment of every, every waking moment. And even my dreams, I was haunted by these horrible nightmares.
But on that journey along the inside passage, meditating, coming to grips with what the the world was and who I was and what I had experienced, I finally let it go. And I feel like I've been a somewhat sane individual ever since, somewhat.
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be able to tell you went through all this with how you're presenting yourself right now. So well done, man. Yeah. I think you've done a lot of self-development. Thanks, man. I mean, being homeless for two and a half years, that could not have been easy.
It wasn't that long. Well, I mean, technically, yeah, I was homeless for like half a year in LA. Jeez. Well, LA and across the country, I was hitchhiking and stuff. And then for two years, two and a half years, I was just bouncing around the world. Couch surfing. Yeah, couch surfing, homeless in some stints for sure. I had just all these odd jobs. I would live on farms.
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Chapter 5: How did Alex transition to cinematography?
Sorry. And, um, I would work like 16 hour days, um, seven days a week. I never had a day off. Uh huh. They said in all 32 years that they had been doing that journey, no one had ever stayed the full four months. Whoa.
I knew why very quickly, but I stayed and I got off that boat in Seattle and I'm like, I'm listening to the boat yard, all the machine, heavy machinery, uh, the airplanes droning overhead, the like loud noises, the smog, all that like desolation that used to just scare the hell out of me because it would just remind me of death. And I was totally at peace with it. I was just like looking around,
Like, this is okay. Wait a minute. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid anymore. It was this really stark realization. Two and a half years, you're in this constant fear. And then suddenly you realize it's gone. Oh my God, man. It was like the greatest high I've ever had. I bet. Yeah. Wow. What was the next step from there?
I decided to become a writer. I had so many stories that I experienced along that journey. And I realized I probably had one of my own, and this is something I've always sort of been aloof about. And people, I was a ghost writer for 10 years, A lot of the people I worked with, they'd say, Alex, you should write your own story. Like, holy shit, man, you've been through a lot.
And I just kind of laughed it off. I'm like, I don't really think so. But I realized at some point I should, and that's why I wrote my own book. But at that time, I was 21, and I've always been fascinated by stories of the human experience. So I decided... I'm going to write about them. And it was within about a year, I got my first ghostwriting gig by accident. Turned out to be a sociopath.
Murdered his wife. But, you know, it was a gig until I fired him. And that's the whole podcast right there. It was wild. Yeah, that dude was a dick. Yeah. Don't share journals with me. If you say you're going to try to murder your wife, I'm going to talk about it. Wow. I'm going to take issue with that. Come on. Why did he want to murder her? He wanted to gain custody of his kid.
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Chapter 6: What are the insights on the Long Island Serial Killer case?
Wow. So he was very sporadic, very emotional, it sounds like. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, man. It was bad. And he owed me like two months of back pay. And I was broke. I was like, you know, I was relying on that money to come in and it didn't. But that situation is what catapulted my career as a ghostwriter very early on.
Everything happens for a reason, right? I think so. That's crazy. Why do you think he didn't want to pay? Because obviously you had the money. Dude was worth a lot of money.
He didn't want to pay because I confronted him about the journal entry that he'd given me to ghostwrite his memoir. And I confronted him about that. I said, hey man, you mentioned these thoughts about murdering your ex-wife. that doesn't sit right with me. We got to talk about this. This is bad. And so he's just like, yeah, well, we're not going to work together anymore.
So I'm not going to pay you the last like two months of work. Yeah. He just, that's what he did. Never got the money and that's fine. Yeah. And there was a lot of drama around him, right? When you were with him. I mean, you told me out there, you got kidnapped once with him. Oh, that was John. That was John McAfee. Oh, that was a different person you're talking about?
Yeah, John. This was my first client of all time. Got it. And he turned out to be like a sociopath. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about John this whole time. Sorry, man. No. John was a sociopath too, all the way. That's why I thought you were talking about him. Oh, John's story is crazier than all of them for sure.
Wow. So you just said you attract these, I don't know what to call it. Eccentric people. Yeah. Crazy people. They're just drawn to you for some reason.
They are, they are. And it was like that on the streets too. It was fascinating. It's always been a thing. People have noticed about me, my friends, my family. They're like, how do you attract these just eccentric, controversial, wild people? And I think it's largely because I was kind of one of them, like a black sheep growing up. But they do, man, they're everywhere.
Even on streets, people would like gravitate to me. And people with wild stories, Wild stories almost like they knew I was a writer and some in some way.
We're trying to get their story told Interesting must be something about your energy that gives them comfort to think so I'm confined maybe yeah, and as a writer, that's perfect Yeah, dude you have to have empathy as a ghost writer if you don't have empathy and if you're biased and if you're like you lean more to the left or more to the right and you like impart your own biases to your
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Chapter 7: How do killers exploit police loopholes?
But the cops don't want to take accountability because their jobs could be on the line, right? Some of the cops, I would say the majority are amazing at what they do. They're really good. They're also overworked and underpaid. But sometimes, yeah, sometimes I think that is the case. Sometimes with bad cops, like not the majority.
Yeah, that's with any industry. There'll always be bad apples in any job. In any industry, exactly. Yeah, that's crazy. So has it gotten to the point where federal agents are involved?
The FBI did a full report on the alleged murders in La Crosse. I believe it was La Crosse. And they said that they found no evidence of homicide. Whoa. That was a while ago. What? Yeah. And I find that extremely hard to believe. You got one, one of the kids was exsanguinated. He was drained of blood. What?
Yeah, he was drained of blood. And in a way that the medical examiner could not even detect. It's not like they, you know, they cut him right here in the jugular. No, they couldn't detect how the blood had been drained from his entire body. But based on the lividity of the corpse from the photographs,
like Kevin Gannon and his team looked at, it appeared that the victim might've been held upside down, hanging upside down and drained of blood. You got people who were found in the same location, up river, upstream, physically impossible. You can't float upstream. All these cases of, they're gone for two weeks to two months,
the bodies only show signs of decomposition for a period of like 12 to 84 hours. So where were they the rest of the time? Well, they were clearly alive. There were articles of clothing and personal belongings that would show up at this Hiawatha statue in La Crosse and right by the river. And the people would go missing
and then their ball cap would show up hanging on a pole or their wallet would be found stacked very neatly on some of their clothing right there. And just so many bizarre circumstances surrounding these deaths. So I just find it incredibly weird and suspicious that the FBI would write them off all as drownings.
That is weird, man. And since they're in the water, I'm assuming the fingerprints are gone too, right? Yeah, exactly. Wow, so it's definitely a group that really knows what they're doing. And if they know how the law operates, that makes me wonder if they have someone that used to be former law involved, you know, to know all that stuff.
Potentially, in my opinion, whoever they are, they're extremely intelligent and well-organized. I think they're just a riff-raff, ragtag group of nobodies. I believe that they know... exactly what they're doing. Yeah. And they go after, oh, go ahead. I was just gonna say, they have 100% success rate. Yeah, no one's been arrested, right? Yeah. And they go after children primarily?
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