Regarding the question about the inspiration for Mr. Smiley, the song reminds me of a scene in the movie The Burbs (1989) in which Tom Hanks is the protagonist. Hanks's neighbor recounts a notorious murder that occurred in the neighborhood decades earlier. Skip, a cheerful man who operated an ice cream parlor in town, had murdered his family with an ice pick and left them to decompose in the basement of his house.