Welcome back to the Path went Chile. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. October sixteenth, nineteen
eighty seven, Indiana, Pennsylvania. Jack Davis Junior, a twenty year old
sophomore at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, fence the night partying and drinking with members
of his fraternity, but never returns to his apartment. Five days later,
Jack's body is found at the bottom of an exterior stare well on campus,
and the county coroner concludes that he passed out there well intoxicated and choked to
death on his own vombit. However, there are a number of discrepancies which
makes Jack's family suspect his body was placed in the stairwell after he died,
and the investigation is eventually reopened. When Jack's body is exhumed, a number
of unexplained fractures are discovered on his skull, but the actual circumstances of how
Jack died remain unclear. After that, the path went chilly, So today
we're going to be exploring an odd case involved a university student, which was
featured on Unsolved Mysteries he unexplained nineteen eighty seven death of Jack Davis Junior.
Jack was a sophomore at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who went missing after spending the
night partying and drinking. When Jack's body was discovered at the bottom of a
university stairwell five days later, his death was initially ruled to be a tragic
accident and that he choked to death on his own vombit. However, there
are a number of troubling questions, as it seemed unlikely that Jack's body could
have remained at the bottom of this stairwell on a busy campus for that length
of time without anyone noticing him. The case eventually captured the attention of noted
forensic pathologist doctor Cyril Wecht, and after Jack's body was exhumed, he reached
the conclusion that Jack was likely alive for a couple of days after he originally
went missing, and that his death was actually the result of a brain hemorridge
caused by some unexplained skull fractures. This strongly suggested that Jack died at another
location before someone planted his body in the stairwell, but if so, what
actually happened to him? And who was responsible. An extensive investigation was performed
by freelance reporter Marlene Gentlcore, who published a book about the case titled Justice
Wanted the Kid in the University Stairwell. But even though Jack's death has always
been surrounded by a lot of hearsay and rumors about an alleged cover up,
there seemed to be very few verifiable facts. Are going to explore this perplexing
case on today's episode, Well, I'm very interested that you guys are bringing
me a case about a university campus, and particularly in this one. The
moment you said he was out of fraternity party and he was drinking and eventually
ends up in this stairwell, supposedly choking on his own vomit, A million
questions went through my head. One, I feel incredibly empathetic and so sorry
for the parents who are dealing with this information, who don't know exactly what
happened to their son and who could have been involved in this. But also
you know that there was attention brought to Jack and saying he chose to drink
that night. This is the consequence of drinking too much at a college party,
and the parents are saying, is it like, did my son need
to die that night? Or let's say he did choke on his own vomit?
Guys, did no one at that party have a responsibility to help someone
who is that intoxicated or worse, if it is foul play. Who could
have taken him into that stairwell? Were they nursing him and trying to keep
him alive because he did drink too much of their fraternity party and they don't
want to be shut down. The only problem I have with that is if
there were two college age kids that carry his body somewhere else, I find
it very difficult to think that both of those people could keep their mouth shut
for years and years and years and not say anything, because how that would
weigh on most people's conscience. Seems like at least one of them would have
cracked. Yeah, this is kind of an interesting story where there seems to
be, as we're going to talk about, a shroud of silency surrounding what
happened, where you get the sense that there are people there who have heard
rumors about what happened, and people who may want to talk, but they
have somehow managed to keep their mouth shut for a very long period of time.
And like you said, it's very hard for young for college students to
do that for so many years. But it seems like if something did happen
to Jack, that's exactly what happened in this case. Don't tell me that
institutions are hushing the children that are involved in this case. No, universities
never cover anything up. I'm sure sure you had to pitch your perfect existence
when you worked at a university. Absolutely, we're all there for the students,
um No. But also the fraternity functions the same way. I mean,
if you've watched like The Hunting Ground, or you've watched any kind of
show about fraternity life and sorority life, there is a It is an institution.
It is a it's like almost a legacy and a heritage that's passed down
to these kids. And so to ruin the name of that fraternity is something
that is so protected, it is so you know, secreted, because that's
our brothers, that's our kind of brotherhood. It's no different than the military
anything else. Because we stand next to each other and we earned our way
into this group. We have to protect it. This isn't aside, but
it is relevant to the institutions have either of you seen the movie Promising Young
Woman. Oh, yes, yeah, that was excellent. It was so
good. Actually, you have to watch it. But there's a part that
is like husually relevant because one of the girls the story is about, it's
about kind of avenging her. She was in med school, and like the
dean basically covered it up because the guy was important and they wanted to preserve
the reputation and probably whatever donors were donating, they wanted to make that make
sure that cash was still flowing. So anyone that comes to them with a
sexual assault claim or any type of claim that it may reflect poorly on them.
It's like, you are an inconvenience. Let's find a way to kind
of discredit you or just make you go away. So sad, it's so
sad. What's the name of this film? Promising Young Woman? Okay,
I will watch, and I will watch knowing that unfortunately, that happens every
day on our college campuses. So our story begins in Pennsylvania in nineteen eighty
seven, and our central figure is twenty year old Jack Davis Junior. Jack
originally hails from the township of penn Hills in Allegheny County and his father,
Jack Davis Senior, and mother, Elaine Lynch, divorced shortly after he was
born. Jack Junior had no biological siblings, but when he was only two
years old, he would find himself with several step siblings when his mother got
remarried to another man who had six kids of his own. After being raised
by his new family and graduating high school, Jack decided to move to Indiana
County in order to attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania, more commonly known as i
UP. At this point, Jack is a sophomore majoring in business and lives
in an off campus apartment with four roommates. He's also a member of the
Sigma Tau gamma fraternity, more commonly known as Sigtau. On the evening of
Friday, October sixteenth, Jack drove to a party at an off campus sorority
house alongside another member of his fraternity, who functioned as his mentor and was
often referred to as his big brother. While there, they were joined by
some other fraternity brothers, and a group of them decided to leave the party
with Jack shortly before thirty pm in order to walk to a tavern in downtown
Indiana called al Patties. Throughout the course of the night, Jack consumed a
lot more alcohol, and sometime after arriving at the tavern, he would get
into an altercation with another student. Since Jack was technically still under the legal
drinking age of twenty one, he was escorted out of al Patties and not
allowed back inside. Jack then decided to walk across the street to another bar
named Calicos, but he would soon disappear and he never returned to his apartment
that night. When Jack failed to resurface over the weekend, his roommates just
assumed he'd taken a trip somewhere, but they started to become concerned once they
learned that Jack did not attend any of his classes on Monday, October nineteenth.
Jack was officially reported missing to the Indiana Borough Police Department that night,
and his family would be informed about what was happening. Jack's car was soon
discovered in the exact same place he'd parked. Would attended the party at the
sorority house on Friday night. This town sounds exactly like a typical college community
where you park your car and you're not really expected to use it unless you
need to drive to target or something like that. Right, you walk everywhere
you walk to your friend's house, You can walk across the street to these
really cool restaurants and bars and things like that. The cater to the college
students, and it kind of sounds like what Jackane's fraternity brothers were doing,
hopping from party to bar and just seeing where else they could go. I
find it incredibly powerful that he gets into this fight with another student at the
first bar, because we've all met incredibly young, intoxicated individuals, particularly men,
who will say something wrong or antagonize somebody and they start fussing and something
very minor becomes an incredibly huge ordeal and multiple friends get involved. You know,
people want revenge for something you just said, and it can turn really
ugly, really quick over nothing because of the alcohol consumed by both parties.
And so I'm wondering, did this single student turned to a group of his
buddies and say, hey, man, like this guy's mouth and off to
me, I need your help, And did they follow him? Were they
watching him? Do we know anything about that person he got into a fight
with, Not really though, but just momentarily, I'm going to be talking
about the last known person to have seen Jack alive, who gave a story
about his whereabouts before he went missing. But one of the issues we're going
to come to do in this case is that we're going to get differing accounts
from different witnesses of certain events that happened that night, So you can't really
know the full truth, and you really can't even be certain if this fight
will have any relation to what happened to him. So by the afternoon of
Wednesday, October the twenty first, Jack's disappearance had been publicized, so a
student named Tom Brennan came forward to police and shared some information about having cross
passed with him. Brennan claimed that sometime between one and one thirty am on
Saturday, October the seventeenth, he came across Jack leaning up against the wall
outside Calico's Bar, and that he looked intoxicated. At the time, a
small scuffle was taking place outside the bar, and Jack appeared to be angry
as he openly stated that he wanted to fight members of a rival fraternity named
Phi Delt. Brendon prevented Jack from getting involved in the scuffle, which was
soon broken up by the police, and he offered to walk Jack back home.
After they left the scene. Brendon asked Jack where he lived several times,
but Jack refused to answer, so Brendon escorted him to Alkin Hall,
which was his own dormitory on campus. Brendon said that he went inside the
dorm to check with a friend to see if Jack could spend the night there,
and he went back outside. Jack was gone, oh no, okay,
so this is this is what sounds like is happening with Brennan's account.
He runs in to Jack and he realizes something's wrong. This is what I
was praying, you know, people would do. They're saying, I'll help
you. I can help you get back to campus. You may not tell
me exactly where you live, but maybe I can get you home and you
can sleep this off. And so Brennan takes him back to the dorm.
He looks away briefly, and Jack leaves. Jack's at that point where things
aren't rational to him right. He's not able to make good decisions. He's
not able to understand that Brennan's right that he needs to stay put. These
are the friends that say, like, give me him a car, keys
when they're drunk as a skunk, right, or they say like, I'm
fun, I'm sober, and they're clearly very very intoxicated. Jack's being a
normal college kid that says like, no, I'm fine, right, and
he wants to kind of do this on his own, because honestly, at
this point, it sounds like his rationality and kind of making sense of the
situation has eluded him. Oh yeah, like just the fact that Brennan tried
to ask where do you live? Where can I take you back? And
Jackie refused to answer because it seemed obvious that maybe he didn't even want to
go back, like maybe he wanted to go to the bar and get involved
in the scuffle or something. And he just seems that he was just not
ready to go back home and go to sleep. So that's why it's easy
to believe he might have gotten himself into some trouble. By the time Brennan
came forward and shared his story, Jack's family had made the trip from Penn
Hills to Indiana, so later that same evening, they decided to organize the
search effort of the IUP campus, which consisted of numerous volunteers, including students
who belonged to Jack's fraternity. They broke off into group, but at around
ten twenty pm, three of Jack's fraternity brothers would discover his body at the
bottom of an exterior twelve foot stairwell located next to a campus courtyard. The
stairwell was rarely used and had fifteen concrete steps which led to a ten foot
wide landing, followed by another five steps to the bottom. Located next to
the entrance of a mechanical room. The room belonged to an adjacent building named
Wyant Hall, which contained a number of classrooms and labs used for science courses,
and the stairwell was only about a block away from where Jack had parted
ways with Tom Brennan. While the Indiana Borough Police had taken charge of the
investigation while Jack was sing, the discovery of his body at this location meant
that the campus police would have jurisdiction investigating his death. A local pathologist named
doctor Stephen Griffin would perform an autopsy on Jack's body and sent the results to
Indiana County Coroner Thomas Streams, who ruled Jack's death to be an accident.
Aside from a small hum atoma above Jack's left eyebrow, there were no signs
of Bruis's defensive wounds or drag marks on Jack's body to indicate that he'd been
involved in a struggle or was the victim of foul play. Based on the
timeline from Tom Brennan's eyewitness account streams, theorized that Jack's death took place at
approximately two am on October seventeenth. He suspected that after Brennan went inside Elkin
Hall, Jack walked across campus until he reached the stairwell and decided to walk
down there in order to urinate. However, since he was intoxicated, Jack
wound up passing out and vomiting, and subsequently asphyxiated after inhaling the vomit into
his lungs. Now, Okay, some of this could be accurate because obviously,
if he's ruling this, he had a found vomit or matter in his
lungs which would show this kind of inhalation of that. But I want to
know was there any mentioning of the pooling of the blood, the kind of
context of the body if he had been sitting outside for this long? One
how did people not find him? And two? What is the condition of
his body at this point? If he has been sitting there for as long
as he's saying, right, that night he went into this place to urinate
and he passes out and chokes on his own vomit, then his body should
show that length of time that he's been out in the elements. And again,
how do so many people walk by him? Get it's not a commonplace
to be, but someone a maintenance man, somebody had to walk into that
building at some point. Yeah, we're going to talk about these discrepancies later
on, But it seems that the local authorities did a pretty half assed job.
Like examining jack Spot, they just automatically ruled it was an accident and
then decided that he should be buried. And it's not until a couple of
years later when doctor Cyril Wecht, who is an expert on the sort of
thing, starts pointing out a lot of the discrepancies that you mentioned and asked
a lot of the same questions you asked, and finally realize that, hey,
there's something not right here. Could he really outside all this time without
anyone noticing? And also there are certain things about his body which do not
lend credence to the idea that he was outside for that length of time.
It feels lazy and it feels like they really rushed to jump to conclusions.
It was like doctor Stephen Griffin had these findings and the police had these findings,
and doctor Streams was just like, Okay, well, I'm not really
going to look any further. This all lines up when if you look at
all of the evidence. There's a lot of things that don't fit here.
But I agree Ash, I'm very interested in I don't think we have that
information, but I would love to know where the liver mortist was, or
the pooling of the blood, and what state of rigor mortists was the body
in, because if I'm may be incorrect here, but the body goes into
rigor for a period of time and then rigor kind of relaxes. Is that
correct? I don't know. You probably know more than I do on that
one. I don't know, Robin. Do you know, because like I
thought, after a few days, it sort of like it wasn't so difficult
to move the body, like it was kind of a temporary thing. But
I could be wrong. I'm not entirely sure, but I know that when
Cyril Weck looks at it, he says that he believes that Jack was still
in the rigor mortist phase when his body was found, which would indicate that
he was not dead for five entire days. Then that's probably right, Jewels.
You're probably as because if you're still in the rigor mortist phase, it
means there's a phase post m and so's what's hard is that those were critical
elements that are not difficult to observe. All the pulling in the blood should
have been exactly where he was making contact with the concrete, and that's it.
And so those would have been such easy things to document. The context
are the quality of the skin and the swelling of the body and all of
these different, you know, things that you would see when you found him.
I think it's one of these things that you know, we see kids
have these tragic outcomes to nights of parting. It is not a completely abnormal
scenario to think about. And I think you're right, Jewels. I think
it sounds lazy. We have a dead kid on our campus. It's because
he was drunk, and unfortunately, accidents happen and that allows everything to kind
of go away. And even if it's not a malicious ruling, it's the
easy way out and not have to put too many resources or time And how
many times were the campus police officers actually dealing with these issues? So maybe
a lack of experience and laziness. Yeah, I was going to ask you,
Ashley, did red flags go up? And I said that the jurisdiction
went over to the campus police because I know they often don't have the best
reputation for investigating actual crimes that take place, which are probably better served being
investigated by professional police forces off campus. Yes. So I have a lot
of amazing former students and things like that who have found campus police jobs.
They're incredible jobs to have. They're actually like officers who will go above and
beyond to really help the community, which is what officers are supposed to be
doing. But you nailed it. They're not as kind of focused on violent
crimes. They're not as well versed on especially these this magnitude. A homicide
or a death suicide like these are bigger issues than you know, a student
who has their bike stolen, or a student who needs music turned down the
dorm next to them because they're studying for a test, or like their mopeed
gets stolen. I mean, there's things that happened sexual assault happens. Even
with that, I feel like there should be professionals that are brought in from
the community who are able to support campus police. I don't think that typically
you expect them to be handling deaths. A you'd want a homicide unit to
come in and basically take the reins, because you don't know that it isn't
a homicide until you've collected all of that forensic evidence. So to put somebody
in charge of something that could potentially turn out to be a homicide who likely
has no experience because I don't know how many murders happened on that college campus
or how many suspicious deaths, but I would think that, you know,
on an annual basis, there would probably be less than one. So to
have somebody who has pretty much zero experience, like you said, asked with
violent crime, coming in and taking the reins on this, it just feels
like it's almost a foregone conclusion that you're then going to look at it later
and go, WHOA, we've got some mistakes here. Well, here's what
happened. There was never there was never a time that they approached this as
anything other than an accident. And that's where We've talked a million times police
go wrong. It makes sense that this would be an accident. It is
not. If I thought about a kid dying on campus, I would immediately
think suicide or an accident. Rights. We don't think about these horrible things
that can happen to our students or our children. And so I think the
police approach him said, well, clearly, this kiddo didn't take his own
life, and he's dead, and he was drunk last time his friends saw
him. So he had an accident and died, and that assumption would prevent
any of the steps needed, calling in other officers or departments looking for these
signs on the body. I think they just walked in and said, oh,
no, we have another kiddo who died of an accident because of a
night out drinking, and the case was closed. Well. Jack's family had
a number of problems with the scenario and had a hard time believing that his
body could have remained undiscovered inside the stairwell of a busy campus for five whole
days. In spite of this, most of them reluctantly accepted the accidental death
ruling, but the situation jill Ate Away at one of Jack's stepbrothers John Lynch.
In December of nineteen eighty nine, John was put in touch with Marlene
Gentlecore, a freelance reported with the Greensburg Tribune Review, and he convinced her
that there had to be more to this story. They would launch their own
deep dive investigation into Jack's death, and Gentlecore uncovered a number of troubling discrepancies,
so the Tribune Review decided to publish a three part series of articles about
her findings in April of nineteen ninety. The case eventually wound up in the
hands of doctor Cyril Wecht, one of the most famous forensic pathologists in the
United States, who also happened to work in Allegheny County, where Jack's family
lived. Right from the outset. Doctor Wecht was troubled by Jack's original toxicology
and autopsy reports. For starters, there was an odd discrepancy in the autopsy
report, even though Indiana County corner Thomas Streams had listed Jack's probable time of
death as two am on October seventeenth, only a half hour after he was
last seen, the original pathologists who performed the autopsy, doctor Stephen Griffin,
had listed Jack's time of death as two am on October the eighteenth. While
it was conclusively established that Jack had been drinking heavily on the last night You've
been seen alive, the toxicology report showed no traces of alcohol in Jack's blood
and only small amounts in his stomach and urine in wax size. This ruled
out the possibility that Jack died during the early morning hours of October the seventeenth,
as he believed it would have taken at least thirty hours for all the
alcohol in Jack's system to have metabolized. My eyes are as big as saucers
right now, because that was one of the things I was going how much
alcohol was in his system Unless he had been drugged, and I assumed GHB
or something to non show up in his system. It is very clear that
this kiddo had been consuming drinks from party to party to party to a bar.
He gets kicked out of a bar, he goes to another bar.
He's at that point when you have a friend who's intoxicated, they just keep
drinking, do you know what I mean? There's no kind of recollection of
I'm during too much. It's just like this continuous cycle that happens, and
so for him to have a small amount of alcohol in his stomach and urine
and blood blows my mind. So I have to side with doctor Wegg who
says, clearly something happened. He had to have been able to metabolize this
alcohol. It doesn't metabolize once you're dead. So huge red flag, huge,
huge, huge red flag. Let me ask you both the questions.
Okay, so do you think that when there's no alcohol in the blood stream,
does it mean that he's basically metabolized all of the alcohol from the previous
night drinking, but a little bit of alcohol in his stomach would be new
alcohol, Because it seems so strange to me. I don't know. Yeah,
I would think if he was continually drinking from the night before, his
blood alcohol would show a low level if he down the drinking, but it
wouldn't show that he's got like no alcohol in his bloodstream. I personally would
think that he had metabolized that alcohol. And then maybe either you could think
that he took a sip of alcohol or somebody else put some in his mouth
in order to make it look like this was an accident. Knowing that he
had sobered up, and that they needed to kind of replicate the conditions for
when he was last seen and when he was quite inebriated. Yeah, those
two things don't seem to add up. Where there's no trace of alcohol in
his blood, but there is a small amount in his stomach and urine.
I'm not versed in whether that would last longer than the alcohol in your blood,
but I mean, think about it, if you've ever gone out really
having a good time, right, Like, I'm thirty eight, so I
don't get to do that anymore, and I can't do that anymore. I
just can't keep up. But when I was twenty one and you're drinking so
much, you wake up the next day and you try to go to work
or to class and you're still in a huge fog and probably still intoxicated.
So the fact that he supposedly died thirty minutes after he left Brennan and yet
he's found five days later with nothing in his system, it just it's very
concerning. And if we're gonna go by what doctor Wex says, he says
it takes thirty hours to metabolize that alcohol, So we could look at it
like that, if he had no alcohol in his system. It would have
taken over thirty hours to you get that alcohol out of his system. But
then how did that new small amount of alcohol get there. It's all so
confusing, and the timeline is just done add up. We're going to talk
about this probably on part two. But apparently bacteria can cause alcohol to form
in your body after death, so that could account for the minute trace that
was found in his system. Oh my goodness, that's true. Okay.
I knew that it could, but I didn't know that it formed specifically in
the stomach. In addition, both the autopsy and toxicology reports describe Jack as
having a large amount of stomach contents, which made doctor Weck believe the jacket
eaten something only five or so hours before he died. This meant that if
Jack's death occurred five days before the autopsy was performed, his stomach contents would
have already been digested. What was particularly troubled by the amount of stubble which
was on Jack's face in the photographs of his body, as a number of
witnesses who interacted with Jack before he disappeared maintained that he was clean shaven that
night. These photographs as well as the slides of Jack's body tissue also made
we conclude that the body was not in the state of decomposition one would expect
after being dead for five days. In fact, he believed Jack was still
in the rigor mortists phase, which seemed to indicate he'd been dead for less
than twenty four hours at the time the photos were taken. Another odd discrepancy
was that Jack's clothing was dry at the time he was found, even though
there'd been a heavy rainfall the day before. Oh my goodness, I'm trying
to put myself in the position of his family, which is possible to do.
But when you're sitting there and you say, okay, we've lost our
son, right, it doesn't seem like anyone listened to us that this is
very abnormal, that we're concerned something else happened. And then you start to
hear all of these things that counteract this claim that it was an accident,
right that, or not even that it was an accident, but that there's
a discrepancy of up to five days of when your son was last alive.
It's nauseating to think, Okay, where was my son? Because now I
have a lot more questions and a lot of fear around who was he with,
what did they do to him? Did he suffer? Did he struggle?
What happened to him? Because you gave me five days to play with
to think about right. Question about the stomach contents you said that doctor Weck
said had he been dead for five days, the food would have been digested.
Does your stomach continue to digest food once you die? No, Oh
it doesn't. Okay, it doesn't, I don't. I think what he
meant is that the meal that he had eaten that night, he'd eaten early
enough that the food would have been digested by the time he died. Okay,
okay, I was like, what everything, No, it does up?
Yeah. Yeah. And the stubble is, you know it could come
in a day, but it didn't come within thirty minutes. You know,
you don't regain your five o'clock shadow in thirty minutes. When people reported that
you were clean shaven at the bars and at the party, that seems incredibly
disturbing when I think about my son was described as clean shaven, and then
his body is found dry, it is found in rigamortis, it's it's stiff,
and he has stubble on his face and food contents in his stomach,
So you tell me who was he with where was he And it's also really
disturbing if we think about the fact that he may have been dying at this
point and someone was trying to nurse him back to health, because it doesn't
sound like he would have had the capacity to feed himself with somebody like pouring
soup down his throat or something trying to heal him. It's all really unsettling
when you think about the details. Doctor weck also completely dismissed Thomas Stream's original
ruling about Jack's cause of death when he looked at the autopsy slides of Jack's
lungs, which showed no traces of food particles in his whimpipe or esophagus.
This seemed to poke a hole in the theory that Jack had regurgitated food prior
to his death and choked on his own vombit. However, the biggest red
flag for Weckt was when he looked at the original autopsy report and noticed that
doctor Grippin had not opened up the cranio vault of Jack's skull to check for
possible head injuries. This prompted Weck to convince the Davis family to have Jack's
body exhumed, and they would finally be given approval to do so in November
of nineteen ninety, when the Indiana County District Attorney agreed to reopen the investigation
into Jack's death. After the exhimation, doctor we performed a new autopsy,
and after opening Jack's cranio vault, he discovered a total of three fractures in
Jack's skull, a three inch long fracture at the back of his head,
a one inch fracture above his left ear, and a one inch fracture inside
the sinus cavity behind his nose. What concluded that these fractures had caused a
large subdural hemorrhage on the right side of Jack's brain, which led to a
blood clot and ultimately his death. However, What did not believe that Jack's
injuries were caused by a fall down a stairwell, as that would have caused
what he described as quote unquote eggshell to press type fractures in his skull,
and Jack did not have any noticeable abrasions or bruises on his body. Unfortunately,
it also turned out that Jack's organs were now missing. Even though it
was standard procedure to remove organs before an autopsy and put them back inside the
body before it was buried, this was not done in Jack's case, so
no one knew where his organs went. That alone is incredibly distressing to a
loved one. Right when I learned, wait a minute, Not only is
an autopsy incredibly invasive and disturbing to think about it if you've ever witnessed one,
I remember saying to myself, like, I pray no one I love
has to have an autopsy performed on their bad because it is, yes,
scientific, yes it's done with compassion, but it is pretty gruesome. It's
pretty hard on somebody's physical body. And so the family already knew that that
was happening with their son. Now they realized that parts of his body were
not replaced as they should be. It's really kind of hard to think about
if you haven't lost somebody, but like, even though their soul's not there,
their body is basically all you have left, and you're so concerned about
how it's being handled after somebody dies. So for the family to realize his
organs were gone, it's distressing it's it's hard to think about. I remember
chasing down the leads to where Buddy's organs went after his death, like we
donated you know, different things, And I would call every three to five
days and say, hey, did anything get donated today? Because I wanted
to know where those parts of him had gone, and like, okay,
he helps somebody, or okay, I'm I know that that wasn't usable,
and they could tell me what they were doing with it. So for the
family to say, not only do they not know where it is, but
that now I have to think, I guess, would you throw them away?
Did you put them in an incinerator? Like what did you do with
my baby's organs? That's hard to think about. And then you look at
these fractures on his face, which to me would indicate getting hit, perhaps
a single punch where no one meant for Jack to die, But it takes
just the right angle to hit somebody in the head and knock them out,
cause a hemorrhage and have them die. You see that where people get into
a fistfight at a bar and it turns into a murder investigation, and it
was all just a fuss at a bar. So I'm very upset at this
point for Jack's family, and I need to know more. I'm also really
curious, did you ever find out who any of these people were that Buddy's
organs went? You? Okay? So it was very odd. They told
me that because he had a pulmonary embolism, a lot of his organs weren't
usable. I don't know why, because he wasn't deceased for long, you
know, like before I agreed to have his organs um taken and so but
I did find this, and he is so proud in heaven. He is
so proud. His skin was used for breast implants and to rebuild women's breast
that were needed after amasectomy. So I know he's up in heaven, like
hell, yes, I'm boob. Yes, that's amazing, so very amazing.
I mean, think about what that would do for a woman. But
like it made me laugh in a really dark time where I was like,
wouldn't he be proud? You know? These new discoveries prompted Whack to pay
a visit to the Indiana University of Pennsylvania campus in order to check out the
stairwell where Jack's body was found. He also entered a second floor classroom inside
the adjacent wand Hall, which had a window that directly overlooked the s farewell
with a clear, unobstructed view of the bottom. Since approximately two hundred students
visited the classroom in the days following Jack's disappearance, we founded extremely unlikely that
no one would have noticed Jack's body during the five day window he was missing.
While Wex still thought that the injuries were more consistent with some sort of
fall rather than a blow to the head, he suspected that Jack's death occurred
at another location a couple of days after he originally disappeared, before someone placed
his body at the bottom of the stairwell. Wex stated the fact that he
lived two or three days tells you that the injuries were not immediately fatal,
and that in retrospect, had he been afforded good medical care with the appropriate
neurosurgeon, most likely he would have survived. Can you imagine hearing that as
a family member or a friend and say, like, wait a minute,
had anyone done something to help him, he'd be standing next to us today,
awful. And to hear it three years after the fact, because there
was no investigation like this back in nineteen eighty seven, so they're probably thinking
of themselves. Okay, now we want to find out what happened, but
memories have faded and it's in some of the students who were on campus at
that time they have graduated and moved on. So because they didn't perform a
proper investigation the first time around, we have to start from scratch. So
how will we figure out how this happened. In spite of Wex's new findings,
Jack's family were unable to find any wrongful death or negligence lawsuits against anyone
because the two year statute of limitations had expired. Even though the Indiana County
District Attorney reopened the investigation, they failed to turn up any new evidence to
prove that Jack's death was the result of foul play, so the investigation was
pretty much closed again after one year. However, after interviewing several people who
attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania during this time period, Marlene Gentlecore heard a number
of unsettling rumors about what might have happened to Jack. It turned out that
Jack's fraternity sig Tao, was not officially recognized by the university because nearly one
year before Jack's death, they had been suspended from campus and lost their national
charter due to an incident where they broke into a arrival fraternity house and caused
extensive damage. For this reason, sig Tao was known as a quote unquote
renegade fraternity and had a reputation for causing trouble and getting into fights. Jack's
family was never pleased with them being associated with this fraternity, particularly after an
incident during Jack's freshman year where he attended a rock concert with them in Pittsburgh.
Jack's fraternity brothers made an attempt to steal some T shirts, but when
they were caught in the act, they proceeded to toss the shirts into Jack's
arms and run away. As a result, Jack took all the heat for
the incident and was rested, so he had to call his mother to bail.
Now, those are great brothers, right, So here's what's happening.
It sounds like Jack was actually part of sig Tao before he before they became
a renegade fraternity, and all that means is that their ban from campus.
Right, the national organization has to shut them down or the National Fraternal Order
says like listen, you can't be on this campus. That's your penalty for
whatever infractions you have. And all the fraternity brothers looking at them like,
yeah, right, we are sig Tao and we're going to exist anyway.
So they're basically just living together and hanging out together and saying we're still sig
Tao brothers, whether you want to recognize us or not. And so Jack
is with these boys who clearly don't have a whole lot of regard for the
rules. They're already in trouble on campus. They have a target on them,
so that could be why a lot of people stayed quiet. We've already
been sanctioned, we've already had penalties, we've already lost our chapter here.
Everybody keep your mouth shut if we ever have a chance of our legacy being
rebuilt on this campus. This unsanctioned fraternity reminds me of the fraternity in the
movie Old School. Yes, did they do a lot of shrinking. I
mean probably they do. Know. Yeah, but we're going to talk about
this later on. But I get the impression that Jack was unhappy being associated
with this rendegap fraternity, but at the same time, he didn't really want
to get out. I think he felt a bit intimidated that there would be
retribution against him if he tried to leave, so that's why he stayed with
them, even though they didn't have the best reputation. You also might recall
that on the night Jack went missing, he made reference to a scuffle having
taken place between rival fraternity members of Sink Tao and Phi Delta. Well,
the university tried to downplay the whole incident as nothing more than a shouting match,
other witnesses said it was a lot more violent than that, and a
total of five fights were reported to have taken place on campus that night.
Indeed, when Jack's fraternity brothers attended his funeral, his family noticed that a
number of them had black eyes and bruises on their faces. This is why
one of the most prevalent rumors was that Jack was seriously injured during one of
these fights, so the responsible parties kept him hidden somewhere for days in an
attempt to nurse him back to health. But Jack ultimately succumbed to his injuries,
so his body was placed in the stairwell in order to make it look
like he'd been a victim of an accidental fall. However, it seemed like
most of the students who shared these rumors were reluctant to goal on the record
and speak out for fear of retaliation against them by Sigtao. Well, we
already have on record that these fraternity brothers one protect the name of their fraternity,
right because even when they get kicked off campus, it's that important for
them to uphold the tradition of Sigtao that they're going to continue their fraternity without
a charter, without any recognition from the university, without any funds, without
that and so they're already showing that we will, you know, will die
for this fraternity, right like it's our legacy, it's it's our name.
We are Sigtao. So that's important when you think about would we turn on
that name, would we say something happened within our walls? And also we
can tell that these are incredibly selfish college kid, which is what is typically
the case, right, It's very much about me, me, me,
because look at what happened to poor Jack when the T shirt incident happened.
They just threw it at him and ran like I don't care that there's consequences
for Jack, even though he's our fraternity brother, I don't want to be
in trouble. So you're seeing kind of this dual problem that would exist when
you're looking at an investigation. We have to not only protect ourselves, but
we're also protecting this name that we're already fighting as an organization to keep as
a kind of remembrance on campus. And this could definitely make sense about why
if they had knowledge about what happened to Jack, even if they weren't directly
responsible for his death, they would want to stay quiet about it because they're
already on really thin ice because now they're renegade fraternity who isn't even allowed on
campus. So they probably figured that if it finds out that one of our
brothers died our watch, they're probably just going to shut us down all together.
While interviewing one of Jack's former roommates, Gentlecore learned a number of unsavory
things about Jack's mentor at the fraternity, aka his big brother, as he
was reportedly known for being a major cocaine dealer on campus. On the night
he went missing, Jack and his big brother had driven to the party at
the sorority house and spent a good chunk of the night hanging out together before
they went through separate ways. But oddly, when his body was found,
Jack was wearing his big brother's fraternity jacket, which had that person's name on
the front. When interviewed by police, this guy claimed that shortly after they
arrived at Al Patty's tavern, he and Jack briefly left in order to stop
by Jack's apartment so that he could change clothes. While there, Jack asked
his big brother if he could wear his fraternity jacket and put it on before
they returned to the tavern together. But at least one witness from the party
told Gentlecore that Jack was already wearing the fraternity jacket when he first arrived there
because everyone noticed the big brother's name on the front and teased him about it.
I'm not surprised that a fraternity guys selling cocaine. I mean, you,
it's an easy way to make big money, and usually you're dealing with
other students, so typically you're not really going down to, you know,
really dangerous places. You're selling it to another affluent kid who's going to school
with you. So I am not completely shocked by that, and I'm not
crazily shocked that he'd be borrowing his fraternity brother's jacket. I remember how important
like getting things with delta gamma on it when I was in college, Like,
I craved it so bad, and I would ask some of my sorority
sisters, like, can I borrow one of your wind breakers because it has
our letters on it? Right? And eventually I got my own. But
like, I don't find that crazy. This is his quote big brother in
the fraternity, So sharing something with him that has your letters on it,
I mean not not odd, but I do think this, Why would anyone
lie about when he was wearing the jacket? Like did he really stop and
change clothes? Does anyone remember him changing clothes of that apartment? And is
that a critical importance here when we already know that we saw him after al
Patties, We saw him over at Calicos, remember, So does that gap
even matter we know where he was after al Patties? Would it be so
pertinent that you would like leave mid partying to go change your clothes? Doesn't
it seem like more probable that he would have just been wearing the jacket the
whole time? Yeah, it is kind of weird that but big brother would
bother to lie about something like this because if he was wearing the jacket a
couple hours early, or why does that matter in the whole in the whole
part of the story. But we're going to talk about this more in part
two. But there's a reason that this jacket comes into play, and that
there's been rumors uncorroborated that it may have played some sort of role in Jack's
death. The case would be featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries which aired
in January nineteen ninety five, and the Indiana County District Attorney said he would
follow up on any new leads which might be produced as a result of the
episode. Will Weeks later, the District Attorney's office received an anonymous letter written
by someone claiming to be a former i UP student, who said that a
friend of theirs once told them that Jack had died at a house where some
fraternity brothers lived, and they kept him inside a closet for a couple of
days while they figured out what to do. The Unsolved Mysteries teles Center would
receive numerous phone tip just like that one which alleged that Jack's death was caused
by his fraternity, but none of the callers were willing to leave their name
or contact information, and as a result, these tips went nowhere. Years
later, a message would be left at doctor Wex's office by a man claiming
to be a retired Indiana Borough police officer who said that Jack had come to
him for protection two weeks prior to his death. While Marline gentlcor was able
to confirm this police officer's identity, she was unable to make contact with him,
and as far as we can tell, he never revealed any further details
about his encounter with Jack. In twenty eleven, Gentle Corps finally published a
book about the case titled Justice Wanted the Kid in the University Stairwell, but
it failed to bring about any substantial new leads, and after more than thirty
five years, we still don't know the full truth about what actually caused the
death of Jack Davis Junior. So I guess you could say the path went
chilly. How disturbing is this that a police officer would come forward and say,
Hey, he came to me for protection two weeks earlier, and then
you're not able to get in touch with him. You know who he is?
But you can't get in touch with him. Is this one of those
cases where he had become a confidential informant. Remember, he had been arrested
before, so he had interaction with law enforcement. He also was best friends
and kind of admiring a cocaine dealer. So was he in a situation where
this officer had helped him or had a colleague who quote helped him avoid trouble
and Jack knew to come to him when he was under duress. Yeah,
I think that's a possibility and also like a problem that it could be that
the police know that if the full truth came out and that they were that
Jack was acting as an informant for them and he failed to protect them,
then this would make them look really bad. It's kind of like a similar
theory that's been pushed forward in the Keith Warren case that they tried to pass
off his murder as a suicide because he may have been like a secret informant
and they didn't want anyone to find out that this informant died on their watch.
So that could be why this police officer was willing to share this information
but not actually go on the record and talk directly to Marlene Gentlecore So,
Unsolved Mysteries featured it's fair share of stories about young people who went missing for
a long period of time after attending a party, and when their body was
eventually discovered, no one could figure out the exact circumstances of how they died.
In all these cases, the authorities did not think that any foul they
had taken place, but the victims' families had a hard time believing that their
body could have remained undiscovered at the location they were found the entire time they
were missing. For this reason, they suspected that some sort of cover up
had taken place. Of course, one of the most famous examples of this,
which we've covered on both The Trail Went Cold and The Path Went Chili,
was the nineteen eighty one death of Kurtsova, who disappeared after attending a
party before his body was discovered in a ravine five days later. You can
make a number. You can make a number of parallels between Kurt's case and
what happened to Jack Davis Junior, as they both went up partying on a
Friday night and were believed to have gotten intoxicated before their bodies were found the
following Wednesday. On the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, which dropped on Netflix a
few years ago, one of their episodes covered the two thousand and four death
of Alonso Brooks, who also vanished after attending a party before his body was
discovered in a creek nearly one month later. In both the Kurtsova and Alonso
brookscale, people were adamant that they had previously searched the areas in which the
bodies were found but saw nothing, leading to suspicion that their bodies were planted
there at a later time. This logic also applies to the Jack Davis Junior
case, but the key difference is that while no one could really determine an
exact cause of death for Kurt or Alonso, we've had differing opinions with Jack.
It was initially believed that Jack choked on his own vomit, before doctor
Cyril Wecht concluded that his death was the result of a brain hemorrhage caused by
skull fractures. I would definitely concur with Wex's opinion on this one, and
it's really troubling that no one bothered to open up the cranial vault of Jack's
skull to perform a thorough examination before he was buried. If those fractures had
been discovered the first time around, it could have changed the course of the
original investigation, but it seemed like the authorities were content to write off Jack's
death as a tragic accident and move on. The scary thing here is that
Jack is everyone's son and daughter who goes to college. Right, Jack is
doing really nothing out of the ordinary for a college kid, whether you're raised
with the strictest morals or you are a wild child from the start. College
is that time to explore, to make mistakes, to be a little risky,
to have fun, and really like make new friends, explore who you
are. Right, So Jack's doing that and he winds up dead in a
stairwell. It's really scary because he's not you know, he could be any
of our kids. He could be any of our friends. We all were
in situations with friends in college or in our you know, after high school
days where we did some really risky things and didn't lose our life. So
it's it's hard to think about this case in that perspective. It could have
been someone It could have been one of us or one of our kids.
I also look at it, and I say, all it would have taken
was university police saying, you know, should we look at any thing beyond
an accident? Right, Yes, it is probably an accident when you find
a child's body on campus, right, it's a student who passes away.
Like I said, I immediately think it's a suicide or something horrific happened as
an accident, so a car crash, or they fell off the stairwell or
something at a party. But I don't think homicide. I really don't.
And so when he's found, I don't even think there was malicious intent there.
I think university police said, oh, man, a fraternity guy drank
too much, hit his head. This is sad, and it's an accident.
And then you have a family that says, but it's not. There's
too many things that don't make sense. And because of the family, they
hire this incredible doctor whact whose world renowned for major cases. He's done and
he says, so many things were missed. If only right, if only
X, Y and Z had happened, we would have known this about Jack,
and even he could have still been alive. You have certain things had
happened, so just very it's very upsetting, and just the fact that they
didn't even bother to open the crania vault of his skull, like you think
that would be standard procedure if you think that someone fell down some stairs,
even if you think that he choked on his own vomit, don't you want
to be a one hundred percent sure to make sure that he doesn't have any
injuries that might be consistent with foul play. But yeah, you've disposed of
his organs, but you didn't bother to open up his head. It's really
confusing what they did decide to do and then what they didn't. So I
think this would be a good point to bring an end to part one.
But join us next week as we present part two of our series on the
unexplained death of Jack Davis Junior. 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 these 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 for monthly bonus episodes in
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audio file and then boot up the original Unsaw 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
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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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to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing. Music
by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy