Bodies keep being recovered from the bayous around Houston. Why officials are convinced it’s not the work of a serial killer

First responders search in the water at White Oak Bayou in Houston on October 8. (Jill Karnicki/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

“Enough is enough of wild speculation.”

Houston Mayor John Whitmire was frustrated as he stood in front of the cameras alongside the police chief last month, trying to dispel the rumors that have cast a veil of anxiety over the vast network of bayous that crisscross his city.

“There is no evidence that there is a serial killer loose on the streets of Houston,” Whitmire said at the news conference.

A crescendo of nervous speculation reached fever pitch in the city when the body of 20-year-old University of Houston student Jade McKissic was pulled from Brays Bayou on September 15 – one of seven deaths reported in Houston area bayous last month.

The promising honors student had mysteriously vanished after spending an evening with friends at a local bar then leaving alone without her cellphone and stopping at a gas station next door, Houston police said. An autopsy revealed “no signs of trauma or foul play,” but the cause and manner of McKissic’s death remain pending, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

“That was probably the biggest deal…that’s when college students started getting really worried,” Houston Council Member Letitia Plummer said.

Alarmed by the chain of bodies pulled out of bayous, some Houston residents took to social media to try to make sense of the deaths, with posts pushing theories of a serial killer garnering thousands of likes. Family members of some of those found in the waterways have also shown skepticism over the death investigations and called for more answers.

Last week, the father of Kenneth Cutting Jr., a 22-year-old found dead in Buffalo Bayou last year, expressed frustration with authorities after the medical examiner listed his son’s cause of death as undetermined.

“He did not fall in that bayou,” the father Kenneth Cutting Sr. told CNN affiliate KHOU. “I don’t know if there’s a serial killer but the way that they’re dealing with these bodies is ridiculous.”

Meanwhile, local officials like Plummer and Council Member Carolyn Evans-Shabazz advised community members to be vigilant and walk in pairs along the bayous as they pressed for answers to quell unease and pondered a task force that could be formed to investigate the deaths.

But the Houston Police Department and Mayor Whitmire have vehemently refuted the serial killer conspiracy theories and insist the deaths aren’t connected. None of the fatalities have been ruled homicides.

“Unfortunately, drowning in our bayous is not a new phenomenon,” the mayor said at the news conference. “There are 2,500 miles of bayous, and people are exposed to them, sometimes foul play – often not.”

Adding to the anxiety is the fact that reported bayou deaths in the Houston area have more than doubled compared to 2023, with at least 25 deaths being confirmed so far this year by Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, the medical examiner. By comparison, at least 14 bayou deaths were confirmed by this time in 2024 and a total of 20 the whole year.

The cause of death was undetermined or pending in 16 of this year’s cases, according to the medical examiner’s office.

Criminal justice and conspiracy theory experts CNN spoke with agree there’s no indication that a serial killer is dumping bodies into Houston’s 22 bayous and waterways, but they say it’s natural for people to look for these types of patterns.

“It’s a typical human response to this sort of kind of incident,” said Robert Spicer, a communications professor at Millersville University who has researched conspiracy theories.

A variety of factors could have contributed to the deaths – and the rumors enveloping the lack of answers, experts say.

Why officials say there’s no serial killer

Authorities and experts say there are no connections between the victims that would lead them to believe a serial killer was involved.

“We weren’t able to find any kind of typical pattern,” said Houston Police Captain Salam Zia at the September news conference. “It runs the gamut – genders, ethnicities, age range.”

Demographic data provided to CNN by the medical examiner’s office shows 15 of the people found dead in the bayous were Black, three were Hispanic and six were White. They ranged in age from 14 to 69 years old, and the vast majority were men.

“There’s not one specific type of person. It’s really sort of a bunch of different people that are unfortunately losing their life related to these bodies of water,” said Krista Gehring, a criminal justice professor at the University of Houston.

All but one of the deaths happened within the city of Houston. At least five of the deaths were confirmed in Brays Bayou, where McKissic was found. Three others were in Buffalo Bayou and one was in White Oak Bayou.

The cause and manner of death in the cases included accidental drownings, a suicide, drug toxicity, blunt force trauma and cardiovascular disease, according to the medical examiner data.

For eight of the deaths, the cause was undetermined, meaning “it is impossible to establish, with reasonable medical certainty, the circumstances of death after thorough investigation,” according to the medical examiner. The cause of death is pending in another eight cases, meaning they need further information.

Multiple of the deaths reported in the bayous last year are still listed as undetermined as well, according to medical examiner data.

“There’s been a lot of bodies found,” Kenneth Cutting Sr. told KHOU, highlighting that like his son, multiple have undetermined as a cause of death.

It’s common for the cause of death to be undetermined when people die in waterways, says Jay Coons, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University who served with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office for over three decades.

“The putrefaction process of the human body and water is just horribly destructive,” Coons said. “When you put a body in the water…evidence can be washed away, but also with our hot, humid environment, pretty quickly the body can putrify to the extent that you’re left with very little.”

The only evidence left would be obvious injuries inflicted from a stabbing, strangulation or shooting, he said. Medical examiners would also conduct a chemical analysis during an autopsy to test for poisons and medical conditions.

To determine the presence of a serial killer, investigators would have to take two steps: First, the medical examiner would have to rule the death a homicide. Second, they would have to find commonalities between those cases, such as gender, profession or the type of injuries they sustained.

Neither of those scenarios has happened in Houston.

Drownings are also uncommon in serial killer cases. “Typically serial killers tend to kill their victims with very sort of intimate, close-up ways, whether it’s strangulation or bludgeoning or stabbing,” Gehring said.

Even if there was a serial killer disposing of bodies in the bayous, that would be highly unusual, she added. “You’re risking carrying a body and dumping it into water and people in the public seeing you do it.”

While there are no indications that a serial killer is behind the deaths, that doesn’t rule out the possibility entirely, Coons said. Seeing any evidence of ritualistic activity would be of particular concern, and in that case, investigators would reach out to other homicide units to check if they’ve seen similar crimes, he added.

Council members call for more transparency

Concerns among the community about the bayou deaths heightened when McKissic and others were unexplainably found dead within weeks of each other.

“That’s really when people started wondering what was going on,” Plummer said.

Plummer, who lives off of a bayou, said she started getting calls from community leaders asking for more information about the deaths. That’s when Plummer said she asked Mayor Whitmire and Houston Police Chief J. Noe Diaz to provide details on the deaths.

“It was a misstep to not…take the fear, take the comments of our community to heart and act on it with more decisive information and in a more timely manner,” Plummer said.

But the news conference held by Whitmire and Diaz just “caused more confusion” because the mayor without evidence linked the deaths to homelessness, Plummer said, though many of the deaths are still under investigation.

“We have homeless living underneath the bridge,” Whitmire said at the September 23 news conference. “Unfortunately, the homeless, when they pass, often end up in the bayou.”

Experts say there may be some truth to that theory. A movement within Houston to relocate a lot of the homeless population from downtown could lead them to set up camp along bayous, according to Gehring and Coons. Other factors may be substance abuse, mental health issues and unstable bayous causing falls, they said.

“If you have a body of water, you’re going to have deaths that are related to that body of water,” Gehring said.

Plummer and Evans-Shabazz held a news conference on September 30 with faith leaders, community leaders and students to push authorities to provide timely information on the bayou deaths and address the community’s safety concerns.

“The less information you give to people, the more people make assumptions,” Plummer said. “People start creating their own ideas of what’s going on.”

Having the demographic data, like gender and race, helped alleviate some of the unease residents were feeling and dispel some of the conspiracy theories, Plummer said.

“Until I am given different rationale or reason behind these bodies, I’m going to try to just keep people from panicking,” Evans-Shabazz said.

CNN has reached out to the Houston Police Department and the mayor’s office for comment.

What’s fuelling conspiracy theories

A growing obsession with true crime in the media, a mistrust of authorities in the US and a history of conspiracy theories in American culture likely contributed to rumors and misinformation about the bayou deaths, Spicer said.

“It is a serial killer in Houston, Texas,” one TikTok user said in a late September video with over 3,000 likes.

Another video on YouTube took it further: “Whoever is committing these murders know that once a body is in a bayou, most evidence will be destroyed.”

The Lone Star State is no stranger to conspiracy theories – from baseless claims that cloud seeding caused deadly floods last July to unfounded fears that a routine military training exercise in 2015 was a secret plot to impose martial law in Texas and confiscate firearms.

The increased attention to the bayou deaths may also be fueling much of the fear that residents are feeling, according to the experts.

“Something can fly pretty much under the radar until it’s publicized somehow or it catches the public’s interest and all of a sudden it just explodes,” said Coons, comparing the speculation to a game of telephone.

The deaths could also indicate a need to confront deeper societal issues.

“It’s easier to sort of attribute these deaths to a boogeyman serial killer as opposed to confronting the real possible reasons that these deaths are happening,” she said, pointing to mental health, substance abuse and housing issues.

A search for solutions

Whitmire said there’s no “fail-safe way” to prevent deaths in Houston’s bayous.

But Plummer said she’s working on putting additional safety measures in place along the bayous that could help, including improved lighting, rain signage, call boxes and increased security. Evans-Shabazz says it would be difficult to install cameras along the bayous, but urged residents to check their camera footage for unusual activities.

A task force may also be formed to investigate the deaths once the medical examiner’s findings on manner and cause of death are available, Plummer said.

But it may take several weeks to months for a final report to be issued on each death following an autopsy, according to the medical examiner’s office.

“There’s still work that detectives can do while that ruling is coming forth: interview witnesses, document what the scene looked like, try to recover some surveillance footage, any digital evidence that we can find,” Zia, the police captain, said.

It’s been over a month since McKissic died, leaving loved ones hurting and waiting for answers about why they lost her.

Community members streamed to vigils honoring the student, who was described by the university as “a friend to many in our community.” Others paid tribute to her in her obituary, remembering her “intelligence and humor.”

Another victim, Rodney Chatman, was found dead in a bayou the same day that McKissic was. The cause and manner of his death remain pending, according to the medical examiner.

“Something has to be done,” his sister Xzaviere Chatman told KHOU. “We will never see our loved ones again.”