Welcome back to the path, went Chiley for part two of our series on
the unexplained death of Jack Davis Junior. Robins. Do you want to catch
everyone up on what we talked about in our previous episode? Well, Jack
Davis Jr. Was a twenty year old student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who
was attending in October of nineteen eighty seven. He went out for a night
of drinking on a Friday night, but didn't return home and would not be
seen for days, so they performed the search effort for him and eventually found
him in a stairwell on campus on Wednesday, five days have he originally went
missing. They ruled that he probably was intoxicated and walked over to the stairwell
and fell in and choked in his own vomit, so his death was officially
ruled to be an accident. But Jack's family got really concerned about this and
they decided to try to push to reopen the investigation, and they eventually elicited
the services of doctor Cyril Weck too, maybe the most famous forensic pathologist in
the United States. And of course, once doctor Weck took over this case,
he discovered a number of troubling discrepancies. He performed a new autopsy after
exhuming Jack's body had discovered that he had some unexplained skull fractures. The evidence
did not seem to point to him choking on his own vomit, and doctor
Weck lay that Jack had actually only been dead for maybe a couple hours before
his body was discovered, so his whereabouts were on accounted for during the five
day window he was missing, and this has caused speculation that something may have
happened to him and that he was held captive, or perhaps someone was trying
to nurse him back to health for a couple of days before he died,
and the responsible parties decided to cover up their crime by placing his body at
the bottom of the stairwell to make it look like he died in an accident.
Because Jack came from a renegade fraternity who were known for causing trouble,
there has been speculation that other members of his fraternity were complicit in his death
and stage the accident in order to cover up what they had done. And
while there have been a number of people who have left anonymous tips and said
that the fraternity may have been responsible. No one was ever willing to go
on the records, so as a result, Jack's death is still considered to
be unsolved thirty five years later. So in a lot of these cases where
a victim's death is ruled to be a suicider an accident, their loved ones
are vocal from day one that foul play took place. Here, it's apparent
that Jack's family did have issues with the official cover story about his death,
but it seems like they were content to accept it and move on until Jack's
stepbrother John enlisted the services of Marlene Gentlecore, whose own independent investigation pretty much
changed the course of the entire case. If you read her book, Justice
Wanted, you can certainly sense the constant frustration that she and Jack's family had
to face because they kept getting stone walled at every turn, and you sense
that a number of people just wanted the case to go away and be forgotten.
Indeed, even though their efforts did get the investigation reopened and they received
assistance from the likes of Cyril Wecht and Unsolved Mysteries, they're really no closer
to solving this case and receiving conclusive answers than they were three decades ago.
One of the biggest issues with figuring out what actually happened to Jack is that
his death seems to be surrounded by a ton of rumors in hearsay, much
of it provided by anonymous sources who did not want to go on the record.
The most prevalent rumor is that Jack's renegade fraternity Sigma Tau Gamma, somehow
involved, and that when something bad happened to Jack on the night he went
missing, he was kept hidden somewhere until he died a few days later,
and his body was subsequently dumped in the stairwell where he was found. All
the evidence seems to point to that it seems very obvious that Jack did not
die thirty minutes after he left his friend Brennan or the young man Brennan who
was trying to help him that night, and then he's found a block away
with several questionable factors being present that are really overlooked. So my problem here
is that you're talking about college age kids who are going to keep Jack hidden
and then know that he died, and someone's going to go take his body
to this obscure location. I think it's very possible, but I find it
so ironic that years later, no one has broken, no one's conscious has
gotten the best of them, no one's gotten in trouble and said, you
know what, I may as well just tell you what I know now about
this other case. Right, that seems difficult to me. I tease people
like, if you're ever going to do something bad, you know, don't
don't hurt someone you know, don't do it where you live, and don't
do it with anyone else, because two people can't stay quiet, right,
young kids in college, all of them could stay quiet when they knew something
had happened to Jack. And what's weird about it is that for the first
couple of years you get the sense that there was a culture of fear,
that nobody wanted to speak out because they thought the fraternity would retaliate against them.
But everyone who was attending campus at that time has since graduated and moved
on. They're living normal lives as adults. So it is a bit surprising
that someone with knowledge still hasn't come forward to reveal what happened, because there's
no way that members of the fraternity are going to come to harm them if
they speak after all these years, So the Indiana County Coroner Thomas Streams was
the one who came up with a theory about Jack passing out in the stairwell
and choking on his vomit. While Streams received a lot of blowback from his
ruling, he always maintained that he based it on the report from the original
pathologist, doctor Stephen Griffin, who sounded ridiculously unqualified. The one detail from
Griffin's report which never made sense to anybody is that Jack supposedly had no alcohol
in his blood, even though there were traces in his stomach and urine,
which pretty much seems impossible. Here's how Streams addressed this situation in an inquest
quote, when I first saw this report, I was confused as to why
there was no alcohol indicated in the blood when there was in the gastric contents
and in the urine. When we met with doctor Griffin for him to explain
that to us. His interpretation of this was that the body metabolized during the
time between death and when the body was found. The red blood cells and
the white blood cells still continue to work. Perhaps that would be a good
way to say it. After death occurs. End quote. Well, there's
an amusing passage Injustice Wanted, where Marlene Gentlecore describes reading this quote to Cyril
Weck during a phone conversation and what response by going on an angry, profanity
filled rant about the absurdity of that explanation and how doctor Griffin had no idea
what he was talking about. As far as Weck was concerned, I could
only have died after all the alcohol metabolized out of his body, meaning that
at the very least he was still alive for about a day and a half
after he went missing. Doctor Griffin has to remember that Jack was supposedly so
intoxicated that he really wasn't aware of what was going on around him. He
had jumped from party to party to party to another bar, gotten kicked out
of a bar, going to another bar, and really was in that stubborn
phase where people are trying to help him, and he's saying like, I'm
not going to tell you where I live. I'm going back to drink some
more, and he runs away from this kid who's trying to help him.
So the fact that you would tell me that that scientific thing that's going to
happen after he dies with the red and white blood cells all that's gonna metabolize
a two point two blood alcohol content like this kid's drunk as a skunk.
And I just don't see that process occurring to leave no alcohol in his blood,
very very little in his stomach and urine. I just don't buy it.
I'm with doctor Wack on this one. I wish I could have been
a fly on the wall for that conversation with doctor Wech. He was probably
like, fiz f fat, what is he effing talking about? That isn't
effing true because it is so ridiculous sounding. I've never heard anything like that,
and I think it's something where someone who's a scientist or a doctor believes
that, well, if we're telling a lay person this, they're probably not
going to understand anyway, so they're not going to fact check it. And
then doctor Weck is like, no, it's just not how the human body
works once it's deceased. Yes, I read the passage in the book,
and doctor Wech did use a lot of f bombs, and knowing his voice,
it would have been quite hilarious to witness. However, it's worth mentioning,
and we alluded to this in Part one. The bacteria can produce alcohol
after a body decays, which causes the deceased person's blood alcohol level to rise,
which didn't happen here, right, Yeah, exactly. So theoretically,
even if Jack didn't drink anything at all before he died, alcohol could still
have shown up in his system if his body started decomposing. But the problem,
of course, is that there didn't appear to be much, if any
decomposition on Jack's body when he was found, even though he had supposedly been
dead for five days. So no matter how you look at it, the
timeline and the evidence just does not seem to support the conclusions of Griffin or
Streams. What did always maintain that the amount of stubble on Jack's face is
the strongest piece of evidence that he was alive for a couple of days after
he disappeared, But there is a reason to be skeptical of this as well.
Even though a number of people who interacted with Jack on the night he
went missing were certain that he was clean shaven at that time, you have
to remember that many of them were drinking at the time and could have misremembered
this detail. And it's also worth mentioning that a person's facial hair can appear
to be thicker after death, not because it continued to grow, but because
the skin and soft tissues surrounding the hair can shrink and retract, giving off
the false impression of growth. I did not know that. That's very interesting,
so that could that could have explained it. But I feel like doctor
Weck is smart enough to know that this guy's does he does like Michael Jackson's
death and oh like, I mean, isn't he in tons of cases like
Casey Anthony and stuff? Oh yeah, we're going to talk about some of
his cases in our next passage. But he's ninety two years old and he's
still working, and he was at crime con last year. Yeah, this
guy just doesn't stop. No, no, no. He was at a
homicide investigator's research group that I was at one year, and he's absolutely fascinating.
I just feel like he would have not focused on the facial hair if
it wasn't beyond what the natural process would be, because he seems to cling
to that detail. I also think that when you talk about this idea that
you know, alcohol in your system rises when you die. Remember, he
did have a tiny trace of it in his stomach in urine, so that
could explain, you know, if he was alive and he did process all
of the alcohol that was in his blood, that start of decomposition could be
that small trace amount of alcohol they find elsewhere in his body. But they
said their blood alcohol level rises. So it just seems sort of counterintuitive that
you'd have this amount of alcohol in your stomach but none in your body.
That is weird. I don't know, like because is it produced in the
stomach or is it produced in the liver? Is it produced everywhere? I
have a feeling it's not just isolated to the stomach. So something just doesn't
seem to be adding up here. The way the original Unsolved Mystery segment about
this story was structured was that it spent the first few minutes talking about Cyril
Wecht in his background before it delved into Jack's case and doctor Wex's work on
the investigation. So obviously it was produced in such a way to portray Wect
in the best possible light. But even though he has undoubtedly had a long
and storied career and examined thousands of cases, some of which are among the
most famous murders of all time, it's not like he's been without controversy.
Wact was one of the biggest critics of the War and Commission's conclusions about the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, as he never believed that Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone, and he has always claimed that Kurt Cobaine's death was murder not
a suicide. Obviously, not everyone is going to agree with those conclusions.
All that being said, on this particular case, I would definitely agree a
lot more with Weckt than Stephen Griffin or Thomas Streams. Since there were no
food particles found in Jack's air passages, it seems very unlikely that he would
have choked to death on his own vombit. So We's conclusion about the brain
hemorrhage caused by skull fractures seems like the correct one. But the big question
is where did these fractures come from. It's wild because even Wex says he
doesn't believe it's from an impact from like a fight or anything like that.
That's where I would have thought they came from. That he did get in
a scuffle with somebody, maybe they did try to get revenge on this rival
fraternity, and he got hit in a way that caused a hemorrhage and he
died. But WEX saying is more likely that there was some kind of fall
all our accident, and that hemorrhage would have caused him, you know,
to lose his life. Now, the question here, though, is that
when they do the autopsy initially and they ruled that there's nothing, are they
ruled that he chokes on his own vomit right, he asphyxiates, but there's
nothing in his lungs. What do you guys thinks going on? Is this
people who just aren't used to these kinds of investigations. I don't feel like
they're they're operating out of ill intent either. You think they're in over their
head. They were rushed, they already had an assumption or already told what
had happened, and so they just kind of checked it off. But it
seems really odd that a doctor and a coroner would both say, my professional
opinion doesn't matter. I'm just gonna go with what i've been told and not
what I see. Why that's discrepancy. I mean, I've seen no indication
that either of these doctors were facing pressure from anyone saying that please rule this
an accidental death. Choking on vombit because we want to cover up what happens.
I do genuinely think that they probably just made a mistake, that they
may have just been an experience. They were just not used to doing a
lot of autopsies the cases of this, so they just came up with these
conclusions and made up all this nonsense about white blood cells and red blood cells,
just thinking that the average layman would buy it. But they had no
idea that within three years of this case would wind up in the hands of
Cyril Wecht, who knew exactly what he was talking about and would pretty much
blow a hole in all their conclusions. And how many cases do we cover
or out there in general in true crime where it looks like there's a conspiracy
with law enforcement or with the DA, and there's this big, you know,
kind of nefarious thing that's happening. But most of the time it seems
to be it's just buck covering because of either laziness, poor police work,
just some kind of ineptitude early on, and then all the actions that they
take thereafter are to protect themselves, to protect their reputations, and it comes
off looking like there's this big conspiracy exactly, and a lot of the time
it's probably not that they're covering for someone. They just don't want to admit
that they're wrong, so they'll pretty much just come up with any excuse to
justify their original conclusions, and it looks like they're doing something nefarious. Well,
even if Jack's death was purely accidental and no floul play was involved,
you can definitely understand why there might have been a cover up because at twenty
years old, Jack was still technically below the legal drinking age. One of
the most bizarre side stories of this case, which we've not yet discussed,
is some legal action which was taken against Al Patties, one of the taverns
Jack visited on the night he disappeared. Months after Jack's body was found,
the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement filed a complaint against one of
the bartenders at Al Patties over allegations that he served alcohol to Jack that night.
A preliminary hearing took place, but even though there were reportedly around twenty
witnesses who had seen Jack drinking at the tavern that night, only one witness,
an I UP student, agreed to show up and testify against the bartender.
The witness was shown a photo lineup inside the courtroom, and when he
failed to correctly pick out the bartender, the case was dismissed. But here's
the really weird part. When the photo lineup was taking place, a man
dressed in a suit and tie was sitting in the courtroom next to the bartender's
defense attorney, but the real bartender was actually waiting outside in the hallway.
Well, wouldn't you know it, a picture of the man in the suit
and tie was included in the photo lineup, and this is the picture that
the eyewitness picked out. So it seems like a conscious decision was made to
bring an impostor into the courtroom in order to fool the witness into identifying the
wrong man. You'd think that the prosecution would have strenuously objected to a tactic
like this, but they apparently let the whole thing slide and allowed the case
to get dismissed. I mean, I have no idea if this whole charade
was a completely separate, unrelated incident which had no connection to Jack's death,
but it's incredibly bizarre and just gives off the impression that something hinky was going
on. It's almost like the authorities, we're going through some sort of charade
to give Jack's family the false impression that someone would be held accountable for his
death, but they didn't actually want to go through the process of punishing anyone.
Well, it sounds like the defense attorneys are pretty clever, or I'll
just say that to do something like that, to put a man in a
suit and tie next to them and have the actual bartender out in the lobby
waiting or out in the wings waiting, and you're right, eye witnesses are
going to put those contextual clues around what they're looking at. Right, I'm
picking out somebody who is facing a court date. There's a guy in the
suit. Here's a guy in a suit, and they're probably similar, so
they pick him out. We know that's problematic no matter what, if they
had picked the right person, it's problematic, right, So I don't know
here, It's it's hard Like I definitely know that when bartenders sign up to
take on that job, they're taking on a legal responsibility to not overserve someone.
But if you think about how bars work, how quick moving they are,
how packed they are, it's not like Jack was sitting across from him
in a quiet bar, talking and sharing his life and having him poor drinks
for him. You know, Jack is with tons of college kids. You've
all been to bars like this where you're like, please look at me,
Please get me a drink. Do you know what I mean? You're waiting
for thirty minutes. Your fraternity brothers can be running up to the bar and
grabbing your drinks too. So while bartenders take on the responsibility, it's really
hard to legally charge them and convict them of any kind of foul play.
In this scenario, it's a probably a young kid at a bar right twenty
six years old, serving hundreds of kids every night, and he served this
kid too much. Should there be some kind of accountability, sure, but
not what the family deserved in this case. They deserve so much, so
much more, at least authenticity, transparency, communication. Even had the process
been handled differently, I think the family would have been in a better position,
maybe not having it ruled a homicide or foul play, But it seems
like they were kind of begging for more initially, and they were kind of
shut out with them saying it's an accident. I'm so sorry for your loss
be well, you know, and that's kind of where they felt like,
wait, there has to be more than just you saying goodbye to me.
Yeah, it's almost like they were trying to make this bartender the fall guy
or something like that, just to give the family some sort of comfort,
where it's like, well, it looks like we're trying to punish someone,
but the case was dismissed, so there's nothing more that we can do,
because I really don't know like how many times they would devote time and resources
to take a bartender to court and try to charge him over the death of
a student. I mean, it's not like this was a multiperson car accident
where someone who was drinking it will underage went out driving and got someone killed.
This was just like a kid who was drinking only a couple months under
the legal drinking age, and then he went out and fell in a stairwell.
So it just seemed like it was a charade of some sort. Though
I do find it fascinating that the Pennsylvania State Police has a Bureau of Liquor
Control Enforcement, that they actually have an entire department devoted to this. They
do they do, so that's a real thing. They're the ones who hire
like underage kids to go in and try to buy alcohol. They're the ones
who work with like fake ID manufacturing. Yeah, it's a big deal,
huge deal. I just wish that I was at that courtroom to see the
big reveal when it was revealed, who was the man that you saw serving
the drinks? And she points to the guy with the glasses who's sitting beside
the defense attorney, and the judge is looking at the prosecutors looking, and
then the defense attorney is like, so this is the man, but it
actually isn't the man. The real man outside in the hallway, and everyone
was like, oh my god, this looks like I can see with Lionel
Huts from The Simpsons, how the correct guy is right over there. It's
also worth noting that Jack's original autopsy found traces of cocaine in his system,
though they were apparently quite small, and this is the exact wording which was
used in the report quote A metabolite of cocaine was found, indicating the usage
of cocaine. However, presses of the metabolite in the blood without the parent
compound makes it difficult to accurately define the influence of the substance on an individual
end quote. Given that Jack's quote unquote big brother at the fraternity was rumored
to be a cocaine dealer on campus, this detail is particularly interesting. But
even if Jack did use some drugs, it's unclear if it could have played
any role in his death. When Marlene gentle Cores spoke to one of Jack's
former roommates, he recounted one occasion in the past where Jack did try cocaine,
but he was apparently left pretty frightened by how it made his heartbeat and
gave off the impression that he had no desire to try it again. I
can't see that playing a role in his death. I mean, you think
about, you know, getting drug tested, and how long they say certain
things last in your system. For some things in the way they test you
know, your you can show up ninety days later. And this was an
autopsy, not like, oh I'm alive, let me go into my local
testing center and get a blood test one, you know. I don't I
don't see this being a major deal. I feel like Jack, like we've
said before, was like many other college kids who say like, yeah,
shoot, I'll try that. I'll try anything once and Jack goes not for
me, But we don't know when he tried it and how much of a
residue that would have left in his system. I doubt have any influence on
his death. And some of the listeners who are longtime listeners will know.
I've spoken about my experience going to rehab like nine years ago, and I
remember having to be constantly urine tested, and while I was there, I
remember it was like near the end, it was I think it the twenty
eight day was the last time maybe I was tested. And because they did
intermittent tests throughout the whole time you're there, just to make sure you're not
like sneaking anything in, and they can tell closer to when you've done it
because of the level that you're going to be kind of registering on the urine
test. I mean, I was testing positive like right up until the end.
And so I think, like you said it, some drugs can take
a lot longer. There's a lot of different factors they can kind of underlie
exactly how long you're going to be testing positive. There's some ways you can
kind of speed up the process that are a little bit controversial, But I
just don't think if you have one single metabolite that is going to have any
influence on behavior and kind of played any role in his death. Yeah,
I was going to ask you for your opinion on that. If he had
taken cocaine on a previous occasion, like weeks earlier, do you think a
small metabolite would still possibly be in a system at the time of his death?
For sure? Yeah, I think so. Another frustrating aspect of the
original investigation is how Thomas dreams To determined that Jack's probable time of death was
at around two am on Saturday, October seventeenth. The problem is that he
seemingly based this time on nothing more than the word of Tom Brennan, the
last confirmed witness of seeing Jack alive. As you'll recall, Brennan claimed that
Jack was very intoxicated when they crossed paths, and he tried to make arrangements
for Jack to spend the night at his dorm, Elkin Hall, but Jack
gave him the slip and took off. Given that Elkin Hall was located on
campus only about a block away from the stairwell, then yes, the timeline
would fit stream scenario of Jack walking down the stairs and passing out there.
But is Tom Brennan's account one hundred percent accurate? Well, on the surface,
there's no reason to believe that Brennan's not telling the truth, as he
didn't interview in the Indiana Gazette following the discovery of Jack's body, and it
sounds like he was cooperative with the police and had no issues openly sharing his
story with Marley and Gentlecore when she contacted him years later. But it must
be noted that there's a passage and justice wanted where Gentlecore mentioned speaking with one
of Jack's former roommates who said this about Brennan quote, I know the guy,
and I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him end quote.
Indeed, there are a few contradictions with Brennan's story. Brennan told Gentlecore
that he didn't know Jack that well, but during his original statement to police,
he told him he knew Jack for about a year and then drinking with
him several times. Is that that big of a discrepancy? Like, there's
many of people who are like, I don't I hate Ashley right, And
I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then are there plenty of people
to say that. I mean the I know a couple for sure, but
but you know, like I'm acquaintances with many people, and I would tell
you I don't know them that well, but I could be social with them.
So like if I'm part of a social organization like a sorority, right,
I with sorority sisters, with many girls that i'd go out and study
with or drink with. But I didn't know anything about them. They weren't
in my little group, you know what I mean. We socialized together,
but that's it. It was kind of the surface level friendship, right.
So Brennan could have easily been misunderstood or kind of taken out of context by
saying like I didn't know him that well. You know, I know him,
but I don't know him that well, and then saying, yeah,
I've known him for about a year. I've been drinking with him several times.
That doesn't mean you know him. So are they nitpicking or is Brennan
somebody to start raising eyebrows at. It could go either way. It's possible
it's just nitpicking because he was interviewed for the book maybe like over twenty years
after this incident originally took place, so he could be misremembering things where it's
like he drank with Jack a few times, but in the context they weren't
close friends or anything, so that's why he said he didn't know them all
that well. It does feel just a bit like semantics, because I agree
with you, Ash. I think that you can go out and drink with
people and have party friends, but are you really close with You're close in
the situation where there's alcohol, are drugs involved, and you can have a
good time, but do you know anything about their lives? Do you know
anything about like you know their family, their trauma, those things that truly
make them who they are? And if the answer is no, then I
think, yeah, you could go drinking with somebody several times and still say
that you weren't that close to them. When the Indiana Gazette published a story
about this case years after the fact, a former female I UP study came
forward and claimed that on the night Jack went missing, she saw him at
a party at the Sigtal fraternity house sometime between twelve thirty and one am.
The student claimed that Jack and his fraternity brothers left the party and went outside
to participate in a fight with the rival fraternity fi dealt, but when the
fraternity brothers returned to the house, Jack was not with them and she never
saw him again. While Brennan claimed that when he encountered Jack outside Calico's bar,
Jack made mention about wanting to fight, I delt. But the problem
is that, as far as I can tell, even though Jack can be
placed at a sorority house party and at least two downtown taverns that night,
this female student is the only person who has ever plays Jack at the sig
Tal fraternity party. So could this student have been misremembering things or is Brennan
not telling the entire truth about his encounter with Jack. There's also another eyewitness
account which seems to contradict this student's story because when Jack was kicked out of
Al Patty's tavern and walked across the street to Calico's, he supposedly cross passed
with two other female sorority students, who claimed that Jack uttered these odd words
quote, gee, thanks guys, you just saved me. You just saved
my life. So could Jack have stop by the fraternity party after this conversation
and then returned to Calico's at a later time, or did Jack actually go
there after parting ways with Brennan. Oh, I think all the above are
possible. I think it's really difficult unless we know exactly when these people were
asked these details. If you're talking a week later, or three years later
or twenty years later. I need to know when these people are telling you
these accounts. And we know that, first of all, they're all probably
drinking, so a lot of things can be misconstrued. A lot of timelines
could be off. There could be a lot of kind of fill in the
blank moments where they go like, oh, yeah, I think this was
at this moment, and this is when it happened. So eyewitnesses are not
dependent or reliable anyway. Now, put alcohol with it and young kids all
kind of interacting, I think there's problems with even trying to dissect all that.
And remember we have someone else who said after Al Patty's, he actually
went to go change clothes and then came back to Calico's or went to another
party. So there's just so many people saying so many different stories. Unless
they're all to blame for this, they're all young kids who were drunk and
can't really remember the right details. And I keep coming back to zero wax
conclusion about the injuries likely coming from a fall and not from some kind of
fight or like blunt force trauma. So I will say that there is one
detail about Brennan's account which seems to poke a hole in the original cover story
about Jack's death. Thomas Streams speculated that the reason Jack walked down the stairwell
in the first place was to relieve himself. But here's an exact quote of
Cyril Wex's response to that theory during his Unsolved Mysteries interview. The other thing
that puzzled me was I thought, gee, why would a young man and
in the early hours of the morning walk fifteen steps down a landing and another
five steps to urinate. I remember when I went to college, and I
remember what young men will do when they have to urinate if they are inebriated.
Not too many people have that kind of discretion and personal sensitivity end quote.
Of course, this should be taken as a personal assumption on doctor Wex's
part rather than a hard fact, as not everyone is going to act the
same way when they're drunk. But this idea is supported by Tom Brennan's story,
as he claimed while they were walking together at night, Jack briefly stopped
to urinate on someone's lists. That's why they call it. Yeah, Jack
briefly stopped to urinate on someone's lawn. He apparently did it right out there
in the open and made no attempt at discretion. So yes, this does
make it seem less likely that Jack would later decide to walk down a scarewell
in order to conceal himself. You're absolutely right, like, not everybody reacts
the exact same way. But i mean, think about what's happening when someone's
so inebriated and they're walking around guys do they'll like lean up against the wall
and just whip it out and go to the bathroom. Or they'll lean up
against a car and just start peeing. And obviously Jack just stopped and pete
in someone's yard. So it is odd that I would need all of a
sudden, as I'm getting more and more drunk, I have the wherewithal to
not tell someone where I live, to not stay put when someone's helping me.
But now I'm like, oh, no one can see me go to
the bathroom, let me hide over were here. That does seem a little
bit odd. And this was back during the nineteen eighties, before you had
the risk of going on the sex offenders list for peeing in public, so
I don't think Jack had any discretion back then. A detail about Brennan's account
which always bothered Marlene Gentlecore as that he described Jack as hiding in the bushes
when he went inside Alcan Hall, which seemed to imply that Jack was attempting
to avoid someone. And like we previously mentioned, when Jack encountered those two
female sorority students outside al Patties, he made a comment about them having saved
his life. That comment is particularly interesting when you remember that Jack had been
removed from the tavern for getting into an altercation with another student, so perhaps
he was fearful about possible retaliation. Well, in spite of the skull fractures,
there were no other noticeable bruises, injuries, and defensive wounds on the
rest of Jack's body, aside from a small cut over his left eye,
so I don't get the impression that Jack was involved in a violent physical altercation
prior to his death. One of the most prevalent rumors was that Jack was
killed because of injuries he suffered during a fight with the rival of fraternity.
But while it seems like such an altercation did take place that night, the
biggest issue I have with this theory is that an awful lot of people would
need to be involved in the cobra. It's hard to imagine the being able
to keep a secret like this for over thirty five years without saying anything.
So whatever happened to Jack, I suspect that only a small handful of individuals
know the full truth. For me to think that multiple people observed something that
would end in a kid's death and no one ever came forward, you know,
you have so many people that wouldn't be held responsible if they just simply
knew what happened, or they made a mistake and they said, oh my
god, here's the three guys that actually did this. I can't see at
this age with multiple eyes on the issue this being kept a secret. Well.
Doctor Weck did conclude Jack's head injuries were more consistent with a fall than
a blow. He found it unlikely that they were caused by him falling down
the stairwell. If he had stumbled from near the top, there was a
ten foot landing located fifteen steps below, which would have broken his ball,
and there were five other steps below that, So how did Jack's body wind
up at the very bottom? No matter how you interpret the physical evidence,
I still have an incredibly hard time believing that Jack could have been in the
stairwell during the entire five days he was missing. If he died early Saturday
morning, I could buy that he remained undiscovered over the weekend, but he
was not found until Wednesday night. This means that people were attending classes at
the adjacent Waant Hall for three days and no one saw Jack, even though
there were windows directly overlooking the stairwell. But if Jack's body was deliberately placed
there after he died, what caused his injuries and where was he during this
five day window? College students walk around quite oblivious, right, They have
at the time maybe a walkman, you know, and their headphones on and
they're kind of in their own head. They're talking to people, they're in
a rush to get from class to class, and you know, for me,
I can understand how students wouldn't see them. But there's facility individuals.
There's you know, janitorial staff, there's maintenance people. There's so many individuals
who make a college campus run and they are the ones who take their smoke
break in odd places behind the building off you know, by the maintenance room,
and he needed an air room. I mean, there's people that their
jobs are to be in those areas. So I do find it really difficult
that no one saw them. Students, I get it, they're in their
own little world. They're just walking past these places and not really looking at
their surroundings. But not every single staff member on campus, not every single
person who would have passed that. It does seem incredibly odd. Yeah.
The Unsaw Mystery segment actually brings the camera crew up into the classroom that was
overlooking the stairwell, and if in broad daylight, you get a very clear
view of the bottom. So I have a feeling that even if the students
were oblivious and didn't look out the window and notice the body, I think
that a professor or a teacher or a janitor at some point just would have
taken a quick glance and just happened to say, hey, there's a body
down there in that stairwell and reported it to the authorities before Wednesday. Hit.
Yeah, I don't buy it for a second. That's way too long
with a time frame for his body to lay there undiscovered, like for nobody
else to either use the stairwell or view it from that classroom. I agree
college students can be extremely oblivious, but there's just no way that his body
could have been there the entire time and nobody discovered it. Well. It's
possible that the truth leads back to Jack's quote unquote renegade fraternity Sigma tau Gama,
as it sounds like a number of people felt that Jack was too nice
of a person to be associated with such a group of troublemaker. In retrospect,
a number of people from Jack's personal life now believe he had been given
off the impression that he wanted to leave their fraternity, but felt there might
be consequences if he tried to quit. As an example, Jack was particularly
close with one of his former high school teachers and the teacher's wife, whom
he almost considered to be his second parents. They both claimed that in the
weeks prior to his death, Jack phoned them a number of times and would
ask if they needed him to return to Penn Hills to help them with anything
on the weekends. Jack's mother, Elaine, also recalled receiving phone calls like
that, it was Jacque appeared to be reaching for reasons for her to ask
him to come home. They described Jack as sounding trouble during these calls,
and the implication seemed to be that if they gave him a convenient excuse to
travel to Penn Hills on the weekends, then he wouldn't have to spend that
time hanging out and parting with his fraternity brothers who were likely involved in some
unsavory activities. Indeed, the four roommates Jack was living with at that time
were not members of Sake Tao, and they suspected he was trying to disassociate
himself from the fraternity. The most frustrating lead in this case is the message
from the retired Indiana Borough police officer who claimed that Jack had asked him for
protection two weeks before he died. But this man has never gone on the
record or provided any specific details about why Jack needed protection or who he was
afraid of. But if he was telling the truth, the fact that a
retired police officer got cold feet about speaking out suggests that there was a culture
of fear pervading over Indiana County during this time period. And it might explain
why so few people have been willing to talk. It's concerning because especially,
like you said, it's that police officer for me who said, you know,
he had come to me out of fear two weeks earlier, and he's
expressing to other people kind of this discomfort. But I'll tell you it sounds
so silly, but when you join a sorority, in a fraternity, it
really is burned into you that it's like this, I mean like almost like
you're taking a blood oath to join this group of people, and you're kind
of indoctrinated into this idea that you can't leave. That's you for life,
Delta Gamma for life, right, Sigtao for life. And again, remember
these boys had went they went through a lot. It would have been really
traumatic for them to do something that got their charter revoked. They all would
have been fighting to keep their place on campus and show people how important Sigtao
was. And then you know they're trying to say, hey, we're still
here even though we aren't recognized anymore. And so I could see a lot
of them being like obsessive crazy about their organization and saying like you're not going
to betray us. Now, too many people have betrayed us. You're not
leaving. You made an oath. It's it's that serious. When you're in
college, right, it feels very serious. And so remember there's a lot
of things going on there. There's a reason they were barred from campus.
His big brother was dealing cocaine, and maybe he knew of things that were
way worse than just I mean, okay, any sharing cocaine with anybody would
be bad, right, but maybe he knew of something that wasn't like,
Hey, I'm just this rich white kid who wants to make some money and
sell cocaine to other rich white kids. Maybe there was something deeper going on.
Maybe someone was threatening him. It's something was happening. Is that why
he died? I don't know, because remember a fall is what supposedly could
have caused these injuries. Even doctor Wex says that, so are the boys
really trying to help him and heal him and then he dies and like,
oh, we can't have this on our hands and they just get rid of
him. Is it something like that where they weren't at fault, They didn't
cause his death other than drinking like any other college kid, what a big
brother like some of his associates were around while they were partying, and maybe
these people are like where he gets his cocaine, and so they are a
little more serious of individuals, and maybe they were the ones that pushed for
a cover up when this happened because they didn't want to be questioned or involved
in any capacity. Or you could have seen big brother who was the one
going shoot this could end up exposing my criminal dealings, and so I want
to be able to protect myself and not get banned from the university, have
his mark on my permanent record. You know, what's happened to Jack has
already happened. You know, we can't really help him now, even though
they could have. That could have just been kind of the pervasive narrative that
was being spun at that time so that nobody got in trouble. I mean,
I don't know who particularly was involved, but it just there just seems
to be so many things that are pointing back to the fraternity brothers and the
big brother having this cocaine connection just does seem like this tantalizing clue, Like
how if in any way did this play a role in Jack's death. Even
though he's never been named public, Jack's big brother from the fraternity seems to
be a key figure in this story. It's unclear if he had an alibi
that night, but the official story seems to be that Jack and his big
brother spent the first part of the evening at the sorority party, but got
separated after Jack was kicked out of al Patties. Since the big brother was
reportedly a major cocaine dealer on campus and Jack was found wearing his fraternity jacket,
one possible theory is that Jack might have been the victim of mistaken identity.
If this other guide made some enemies who noticed that Jack was wearing a
jacket with his name on it, they could have decided to attack him before
they realized it was the wrong person. If they caused some serious injuries,
they may have taken Jack somewhere and attempted to nurse him back to health over
the next few days before he passed away. I think that's very possible.
And you know, if you were going to conceal something, if you all
sat down together and you said, hey, guys, we didn't do anything
wrong. We actually helped Jack. We tried to help Jack. I could
see kids convincing each other that they really weren't at fault, like Jack's parents
were going to lose their sudd no matter what. Right, his injuries were
so bad that he was going to die, and we didn't do anything wrong.
We actually tried to help him. So you know, the outcomes the
same, like why hurt ourselves and throw away our futures like okay, and
kind of being able to justify and explain away because there was no foul play.
Right, we tried to do the right thing for them at age twenty
twenty one, right what they thought was the right thing. Obviously, the
right thing would have been to get immediate medical attention, to tell a trusted
adult and get him medical care immediately, but they didn't, and at the
time were they able to convince themselves that they had done nothing wrong. So
if you remember the episode we previously released about the death of Kurt's Soba,
one of the most prominent theories in that case is that Kurt attended a party
at a duplex and spent a couple of day is recovering on a cot inside
the basement, possibly because he had a negative reaction to some alcohol. He
drank there. Since Kurt was only seventeen years old and well below the legal
drinking age, the people who hosted the party may have thought there would be
a lot of blowback if they took him to get proper medical attention, which
is why they hoped they could nurse him back to health on their own.
But when things didn't go as planned and Kurt died, they took his body
to a nearby ravine and dubbed it there. Well, you have to wonder
if a similar situation happened to Jack. Though his issues would have been caused
by a head injury, not alcohol, the fact that Jack had undigested stomach
contents at the time of his death seems to indicate that he was fed by
whoever was taking care of them. We can't get in trouble. I mean,
there's a lot of kids. That's why people die in college dorm rooms
and at parties. People are like, well, let's roll them on their
side, let's try to help them. Oh my god, you know they
died. Oh what do we do. I think that's a very real and
probable outcome for this case, and even that could explain the head injuries or
something. It could be something as simple where he's recovering from alcohol poisoning or
something and then just rolls out of bed and hits his head, and whoever
is responsible is like, well, he shouldn't have been drinking, we shouldn't
have had him here to begin with, so we're not going to get the
medical attention and contact the authorities. And I could literally see some young people
of this age bracket being like, let's just shoot up a count of chunky
soup. We'll port down his throat. That's going to fix it, because
you have this idea that, like, you can fix this problem because when
you're a kid, that's what your mom does, you know, feeds you
that type of food. So I could see them doing something like opening up
his mouth and just like force feeding him soup or something. You know that
is you don't really need to chew, just to get something into his stomach,
because the undigested food in his stomach seems to be not something that he
would have taken on his own, given the gravity of his head injury exactly.
That's interesting that they never specify what food he had in his stomach,
because it seems most logical it would be something that isn't really solid like soup,
which he wouldn't have been able to eat on his own. Now.
Even though this story has never been confirmed by any official sources, we've come
across a few online discussions and comment sections where someone has shared a rumor about
Jack being injured during a game of Donkey Kong. No, not the famous
video game Donkey Kong, but rather a real life variation of it that Sigtao
apparently liked to stage as a hazy activity. It would involve them rolling a
keg of beer down a staircase and new pledges would have to climb up the
steps to jump over it, much like how you have to dodge barrels while
playing the video game. Well, rumor has it that Jack got seriously injured
while playing this version of Donkey Kong, but instead of getting a medical attention,
the responsible parties kept him somewhere for a few days before he died.
Not out of the question, I mean, this is the silly stuff that
college could do at a party, right, And I mean I could see
the problem here is that people would have been watching. That would have been
twenty, you know, thirty people who were watching, and again none of
them came forward like, oh, man, I saw him hit his head.
He tried to jump over this barrel, but he hit the stare in
front of him and staid with his head and he got up and the guys
took him, you know, took him away. That wouldn't be something that
I wouldn't come forward with. I would think someone at that party would have
said something. But I mean, this is not it's as silly as it
seems. It's actually a very believable whole scenario. Yeah, I would explain
him why he has those injuries to his skull and how he could have been
killed in a manner where they didn't directly kill him or murder him, but
they displayed negligence in his death. And it's the type of thing that could
destroy their futures if it came out. So that's why they decided to cover
it up. But you didn't make a good point there that that hazing activities
and fraternities generally take place in front of all the members, and that would
be a lot of people would have to stay silent about this, as opposed
to perhaps one or two. I guess it depends how seriously you take your
fraternity and this code of silence. It does seem like this would explain a
lot of things like that type of an activity. And it's interesting though because
the time period being it was nineteen eighty seven, I think, right,
Robin, Yeah, they wouldn't have had cell phones. So I think if
something like this happened and somebody just fell off the face of the earth for
three days, at this day and age with cell phones and social media,
you would have friends, family members being like something is wrong really quickly.
You know, you notice the absence of somebody who's close to you very fast.
So it's unfortunate that this time frame kind of allowed individuals to potentially do
something like, you know, just put them into a closet, like it
is just so awful to think about if that was the case, if that
did actually transpire the way that the rumors said that it did. To think
that poor Jack was in that closet all alone and dying while these people tried
to scramble to come up with a scenario to be able to cover their own
butts, and to think that, like zero Wect had said that lately,
if you would have got to a hospital, he could have been saved.
Yeah, that's the most heartbreaking part is that his death could have been prevented,
because Wax seems to think that he died only like a couple hours before
his body was found. Now it sounds like during the first few days that
Jack was missing, his family had little success at convincing the police to form
a search of the university campus, which is why they organized their own search
effort on the evening of October the twenty first. I know that members of
Sigtao participated in this search, and if they were complicit in what happened to
Jack, perhaps that's why they came up with the idea of planting his body
at the bottom of the stairwell. I mean, if Jack died in their
care and they disposed of his body in a manner to ensure he would never
be found, Jack would remain a missing person and the investigation would not end.
But by making his death look like an accidental fall, they probably hope
that the investigation would be closed immediately, and for the first few years this
strategy actually worked. Even though the investigation was eventually reopened and this story received
exposure on national television, no one has ever been made to answer for their
alleged role. In Jack's death. And wasn't it a couple of attorney members
that found his body as well? I think so, yeah, because they
decided to volunteer to participate in the search effort. And I think they were
the ones who looked in that stairwell. So it could be just a convenient
thing where it's like, this is a place no one has looked before,
and let's find his body to make ourselves look less suspicious, you know.
I mean, it's not unheard of. This is why Jean Ramsey's dad was
such a suspective. First was because after everyone was looking for this little girl,
as soon as the search starts, he goes straight to her body.
Right, could be absolute coincidence that these boys were the ones who find the
body, but it's also possible that they either knew he was somewhere on campus
or they knew exactly where he was. It's hard to say, and I'm
not saying that they did have something to do with it, but it definitely
does raise eyebrows and make you a little suspicious of the two or three that
found him. Look, Robin and I don't believe that Jack was murdered intentionally,
and perhaps given the information. Ashley. You may tend to agree,
and I can accept that he was the fatal victim of a freak accident,
but by covering up the truth about what happened, the responsible parties caused a
lot of undo pain for Jack's family. His stepbrother John said it was particularly
hurtful when they attended Jack's funeral and the priest decided to take the opportunity to
make the sermon about the dangers of underage drinking. So in a way,
it was a validation for the family to learn that this was not actually the
cause of Jack's death and he did not suffer the indignity of hisphyxiating on his
own vomit. Well, it's tempting to go with Ockham's razor and believe that
Jack could have died as the result of injuries sustained from an accidental fall down
those stairs. I think there are just too many troubling discrepancies to believe this
is what happened. After more than thirty five years, the statute of limitations
for whatever crimes took place here may have expired. Unless this was a deliberate
murder, I'm not sure any charges would be filed, but Jack's loved ones
still deserves some answers, So if you happen to have any information about the
death of Jack Davis Junior, please contact the appropriate authorities. Jules Ashley any
final thoughts. It's heartbreaking. I mean you Nato when you said that this.
Like I said earlier, this could be anybody. It could have been
me in college. I made a lot of silly mistakes. I trusted a
lot of people that I probably shouldn't have and it could have been any of
our children as well, you know, going and trusting people and having fun
and getting caught up in things that maybe you shouldn't have been caught up in.
So it's scary for me when I think of this because as a parent,
right I would want to know the details. I just want to know
what happened. And I do think I'm very much with you guys. I
do believe this is a group of kids who realize something went too far.
He drank too much, he hit his head, and at the end of
the day they were trying to help him. It could also be a case
where everyone involved thought someone else is going to step forward and be that person
that tells everyone so I don't have to and as everyone graduates and moves forward
and moves on with their life. It's permission to forget what happened because someone
else will eventually tell everybody what happened. But that family deserved answers. They
deserve someone to say, hey, we messed up, right, and have
people care more about their friends around them than themselves in their own futures.
That's pretty rare. I think. I bet a lot of people are willing
to turn a blind eye and say, ah, I'm not willing to put
myself out there. He's dead. Nothing's going to change that. Why would
I risk getting in trouble. But that doesn't make the grief and the loss
of Jack any less pitiful for this family. And to think about this pastor
who's standing up there making a sermon about underage drinking. I mean, it's
not the time. At his funeral, his parents are well aware. They've
been well aware before that their son made choices they didn't agree with, that,
they were frustrated with that every kid most kids make when they go to
college. His death is not negated or minimized because he was drinking, right,
It was not the place to bring that to the forefront. It really
almost disrespected Jack's legacy that he was way more than the drinks he consumed that
night. And so oh, I'm just sad. I'm sad for the family.
I am glad that they were listened to. I think it came too
late. But if anybody has answers, Robin, you nailed it. The
time's passed, right, You're not getting charged with first degree murder when you
probably were helping a friend and didn't do the right thing. But man,
if the family could know, think about John, his stepbrother, who said,
like, we needed to know. I just wanted to know what happened.
I just wish they have answers. If anyone knows do the right thing.
No one else has stepped up. They're not going to fill in the
blanks for you. So do the right thing and tell the truth. John
really is a hero in this story in pushing the investigation to go that extra
step and getting Cyri Wect involved, and that really shot a light on all
of this evidence where it was just a shoddy investigation, shoddy work by the
coroner and the medical investigators, just shoddy work overall, in my opinion,
and I think it was a lot of buck covering. Later on and ridiculous
explanations, and it was Cyril Wet who really, you know, blew a
hole in their ridiculous theories about red blood cells and white cells continuing to you
metabolize things after death. It's shocking, it really really is. And it's
also shocking that the campus police were given jurisdiction in this case. I do
think that the rumors, you know, when there's this much smoke about the
fraternity being involved, I think it is likely that there was something like that
Donkey Kong game, and they just panicked and hid the body, and it
was just a bunch of dumb kids, you know, not really thinking about
anything more than themselves, which kids are prone to do, and so a
bunch of them got together and potentially made this pact of silence. And what
is shocking is that nobody has come forward. Nobody's felt like enough guilt to
unburden themselves and to say, hey, like, I don't want to go
on the record officially, but I would like to let the family know that
this is what happened, because if that is the case, and if there
are multiple parties involved, I don't personally believe that it was like a violent
attack. I think it was an accident, but their actions or their inaction
led to the death of Jack, so I would think that there should be
some guilt. So I'll say the same thing as Actually, if anyone knows
anything, please come forward, because this is a big family who I'm sure
would love to know what happened to their son, to their stepbrother, Jack
Davis Junior. You know, he deserves more than what happened here in this
investigation, and more than what happened with that frigging eulogy that hit me like
a gut punch, and Nash, you summed it up very succinctly and perfectly
basically indicated, and it minimized him by making it all about this don't drink
when you're you're underage thing. It wasn't about that. It was about who
he was as a person, and a lot of that gets lost when you
make it about don't drink kids. You know it's bad for you, And
these are the types of things that happened. It was like, you should
not have gone rogue. That was not the right thing to do. His
family deserved better on all fronts. And this case is so heartbreaking and frustrating.
Yeah, this is another case. I talk about these a lot that
haunted me when I first watched it on unsaw. Mystery has been originally aired.
I was always really hot to buy stories about kids who would go out
partying and drinking or hanging out, but then they would go missing or they
would die under unexplained circumstances, and they would present a theory that they were
alive for a couple days and suffered for a while before they finally died.
I mean, we talked about the Kurt Soba case and also the Jeremy Bright
case, which we did on this podcast a few months ago, and also
now Jack Davis Junior, where it seems very unlikely that he died on the
night he was out drinking and we have no idea what happened to him.
But the idea that he could have been being nursed back to health or held
in a closet for several days and suffering badly before he died, and then
someone decided to plant his body in the stairwell to make it look like an
accident is a pretty heartbreaking scenario. And like this is, like we said,
this was probably not an intentional murderer. Whatever happened to him was probably
just an accident, but there seems to be a code of silence surrounding this
whole thing, and they probably thought they had gotten away with it. They
probably were breathing a sigh of or when the original medical examiners thought that this
was just an accident, but I'm sure they were trembling once Cyril Wet was
brought into the occasion, because he's probably the most famous person in his field,
and he pretty much said no, this was not just a simple accidental
death via intoxication. Something had to be happened here and someone had to plant
Jack's body in that stairwell. But sadly, this did not break the case
wide open, as no one really came forward with any hard information to help
figure out what happened. We had a few anonymous tips and a few people
who gave bits and pieces and rumors in hearsay, but nothing actionable that should
had any light. I want to actually happened to Jack, and I do
believe there were a couple of people involved who have managed to keep their mouth
shut, and even though they will not be criminally charged after all these years,
they probably do not want to take their legacynes like they may be having
like bright futures. They may be living nice lives right now, but because
Jack was deprived of having an opportunity for life that like this, then they
deserved to come forward and give his family some answers and some closure because this
is such a heartbreaking case. Robin, do you want to tell us a
little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon
has been around for three years now, and we offer the standard bonus features
like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign thank
you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join
our five dollar tier Tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which
I talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Went Cold's original feed,
so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier
three, the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is a
audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an
audio file and then boot up the original UNSAWD Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I
just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally,
the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode
featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which
I make more smartass remarks about Jewel Kaylor than be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jewels and
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Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy