Houston bayou deaths sparked a serial killer conspiracy theory

From the story:

Dr. Robert Spicer, a communications professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, who has researched conspiracy theories, noted that previous research found people naturally tend to look for patterns, rather than chaos.

"I am not the least bit surprised that when you have multiple dead bodies in the same body of water showing up, that multiple people in town are going to go, ‘oh, there’s a pattern,'" Spicer said. "Which doesn’t mean that there is a pattern, but human brains, just like [Rob] Brotherton’s argues, we’re pattern-seeking animals. We see patterns where there are none."