The death of Dakota James: The Smiley Face Killers? | Ep 187
Crime and Coffee Couple - True Crime Podcast
Allison and Mike
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Skip the banter: 00:09:40
On a cold January night in Pittsburgh, 2017, 23-year-old Dakota James—smart, sarcastic, and openly gay—heads out for drinks with friends. He’s last spotted on a blurry surveillance clip, walking down an alley near the Allegheny River, phone in hand. Then, he disappears. Forty days later, his body surfaces ten miles downstream, ruled an accidental drowning. But his parents, Pam and Jeff, refuse to accept it. Was it a fatal slip into icy waters, or something sinister—like the Smiley Face Killers, a haunting theory of serial murders targeting young men? Tune in as we explore Dakota’s story: a life cut short, a family’s fight for truth, and a mystery balancing on the edge of accident or evil.
Allison's Amazon Addiction - Magnesium powder: https://amzn.to/4c3qWbG
Allison's nightly bedtime drink recipe:
4 oz tart cherry juice (grocery store or https://amzn.to/4hRPdTo)
2 tsp collagen powder: https://amzn.to/4hRPaqG
1 scoop OPC-3 Isotonix - Antioxidant Supplement: https://amzn.to/3Y55JIG
1 oz club soda
Enjoy!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode with the crime and coffee couple. My name's Allison. |
| 0:07.8 | Hey, my name is Mike. Hey, babe. How are you? I'm doing just fine. How are you? |
| 0:12.0 | Good, good. You're a good looking gal. I was noticing the other day that, uh, you know, you talk a lot about this facial stuff and like, you know, your nightly mock tales or whatever. And then |
| 0:21.4 | you're going to run that thing over your face that pokes needles into your face. It's called a |
| 0:25.6 | micro-needling system. Yeah, yeah, all that. You were very excited about that. I'm like, you're |
| 0:29.1 | really focusing on your face. And then you're like, well, yeah, I guess you are kind of becoming sort of a public figure, you know, |
| 0:38.3 | a small, small public figure. |
| 0:40.3 | Yeah. |
| 0:40.3 | I do not consider myself a public figure. |
| 0:43.2 | But when you have your phone in your face and you're just looking at your face, it can be a little humbling. |
| 0:49.6 | Sure, sure. |
| 0:50.2 | A.k.a. appalling. shocking. |
| 0:53.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:53.2 | Well, especially now that you're aging and older. |
| 0:55.1 | Excuse me, I'm sorry, what? |
| 0:56.3 | Yeah, a lot of those things. |
| 0:57.3 | A lot more like crow's feet. |
| 0:58.4 | Like, if I ever think crow's feet, it's like, well, I just look at you and it's like, okay, there they are. |
| 1:01.5 | If I ever think I want my fist to go into your face. |
| 1:06.0 | Then you do that. |
| 1:06.8 | Just look at me. Yeah. So I'm just going to shoot daggers at you. Yeah. Like, for instance, we just had a little, kind of a tiff. |
| 1:13.7 | I don't know if it was a tiff in the kitchen. |
... |
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