Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
Speaker 1: of our series about the murder of Alonzo Brooks. Robin,
Speaker 1: do you want to catch everyone up on what we
Speaker 1: talked about in our previous episode?
Speaker 2: Well. This case was featured on the Netflix reboot of
Speaker 2: Unsolved Mysteries in an episode titled No Ride Home. It
Speaker 2: involves a mixed race man named Alonzo Brooks who was
Speaker 2: twenty three years old at the time and was living
Speaker 2: in Kansas. He decided to accompany some friends of his
Speaker 2: to a party in a very small rural town called
Speaker 2: Lacene on April third, two thousand and four. Do to
Speaker 2: a SER's and miscommunications, Alonso never did get a ride home.
Speaker 2: His friends gradually left throughout the night, assuming that Alonzo
Speaker 2: would get a ride with somebody else, but instead he
Speaker 2: wound up vanishing without a trace. When his family went
Speaker 2: to the area to search, they found Alonzo's hat in
Speaker 2: his boots located in separate ditches at the end of
Speaker 2: the driveway near the farmhouse where the party had took
Speaker 2: him place, so the instantly became concerned. Once the search
Speaker 2: was launched for him, they were unable to find anything,
Speaker 2: but then when Alonzo's family did their own search twenty
Speaker 2: seven days after he originally disappeared. They wound up discovering
Speaker 2: his body in a creek which was very close to
Speaker 2: the farmhouse, and this creek had already been searched before
Speaker 2: by an underwater rescue and recovery team who were absolutely
Speaker 2: certain that if Alonzo had been there the entire time,
Speaker 2: they would have found him. So this led to speculation
Speaker 2: that he may have been planted there at a later time,
Speaker 2: and that perhaps his body was kept in the freezer
Speaker 2: for a couple weeks because he had very little sign
Speaker 2: of decomposition, He did not have any noticeable injuries. He
Speaker 2: only appeared to have decomposition on his neck, so as
Speaker 2: a result, the original medical examiner was unable to determine
Speaker 2: his exact cause of death, so it was officially listed
Speaker 2: as undetermined. It was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and by that point the FBI and the Department of
Speaker 2: Justice had gotten involved started to investigate it as a
Speaker 2: potential hate crime because this was a predominantly white air
Speaker 2: area and there were rumors that Alonzo had gotten into
Speaker 2: a fight at the party, that people had used a
Speaker 2: racial slur in his presence, or that he had been
Speaker 2: hitting on a white girl, but none of these rumors
Speaker 2: were actually confirmed. After the Unsold Mysteries episode aired, the
Speaker 2: investigation got new tips, so they decided to exume Alonzo's
Speaker 2: body and perform a new autopsy. And while details are
Speaker 2: vague and very secretive, the FBI did confirm that they
Speaker 2: found new evidence that conclusively proves, beyond a shadow of
Speaker 2: a doubt, that Alonzo was the victim of a homicide.
Speaker 2: So his death was officially reclassified and is being investigated
Speaker 2: at as a murder. But it's been a couple of
Speaker 2: years now they're having any new developments in quite some times,
Speaker 2: so at this particular moment, Alonzo's murder is still officially unsolved.
Speaker 2: So honestly, before Alonzo's death was reclassified as a homicide,
Speaker 2: I had mixed feelings about the case following my initial
Speaker 2: viewing of the Unsaw Mysteries episode. On one hand, I
Speaker 2: seriously doubted that this was a simple case of an
Speaker 2: intoxicated man wandering away from a party and dying of exposure.
Speaker 2: It did make a whole lot of sense to me
Speaker 2: that Alonzo would leave the farmhouse walk to the end
Speaker 2: of a long driveway, remove both of his boots, toss
Speaker 2: them each into separate ditches, and then walk back onto
Speaker 2: the property in the opposite direction towards Middle Creek. Admittedly,
Speaker 2: people can do incredibly strange and a logical things when
Speaker 2: they're drunk, but I had a hard time believing that
Speaker 2: his body could have been missed at that location for
Speaker 2: nearly an entire month. Of course, we covered a number
Speaker 2: of other cases where people of God missing in a
Speaker 2: rural or wilderness area and the remains were mist in
Speaker 2: the initial search effort, only for them to be discovered
Speaker 2: in the same area months or even years later. If
Speaker 2: Alonzo's search effort had only been conducted by a small
Speaker 2: town police department who were inexperienced at this sort of thing,
Speaker 2: I could give them the benefit of the doubt that
Speaker 2: they missed his body. But this particular search involved the KBI,
Speaker 2: the FBI, and an underwater rescue and recovery team who
Speaker 2: were specifically trained at this sort of thing. Members of
Speaker 2: this team were even interviewed on UNSAWD mysteries, and they
Speaker 2: seemed pretty certain that if Alonzo had been on the
Speaker 2: creek bank the entire time, they would have found him.
Speaker 2: While they certainly could be capable of making mistakes. I
Speaker 2: think it says something that when Alonzo's family, who were
Speaker 2: not trained at this sort of thing, performed their own
Speaker 2: search of the property, they came across his body within
Speaker 2: half an hour. But while the Unsolved Mysteries episode left
Speaker 2: me with the impression that something strange occurred and that
Speaker 2: Alonzo may have been the victim of foul play, my
Speaker 2: biggest issue is that I cannot figure out how he
Speaker 2: was killed or why his body would be concealed for
Speaker 2: twenty seven days and planted near the creek.
Speaker 3: Okay, so super bizarre. The idea of this body not
Speaker 3: being there for twenty seven days, like you talked about,
Speaker 3: could it have been frozen? Was it simply just overlooked?
Speaker 3: You know, they described having to cut back brush before
Speaker 3: they found it. Is it possible that it really was
Speaker 3: just hidden really well, and maybe an animal had pulled
Speaker 3: it a few feet which made it more exposed. But
Speaker 3: remember when you first were describing the day that the
Speaker 3: family went back the first day after he was missing,
Speaker 3: and they went back to look around this area and
Speaker 3: found his boots in his hat. You remember that guy
Speaker 3: that was on the ATV and ran them off and
Speaker 3: told him to get off to the property. If there
Speaker 3: had been a party at my house and you said, hey,
Speaker 3: my son is missing, our best friend is missing. He
Speaker 3: was here last night, I would I'd meet you with
Speaker 3: grace and compassionate and be like, oh man, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen anything. If I do, I'll make sure
Speaker 3: you know to call you. Can I get your number.
Speaker 3: But there was like an anger and a protection of
Speaker 3: that property when it had been so open to people
Speaker 3: just the evening before, So that's quite suspicious as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it's ever been conclusively established who
Speaker 2: the guy on the ATV was, because we mentioned in
Speaker 2: our last episode that this house was a rental and
Speaker 2: that it was rented by four young males in their twenties,
Speaker 2: but I don't know if they were there at that
Speaker 2: particular point. I don't know if the guy on the
Speaker 2: ATV was one of the four young males, but he
Speaker 2: obviously he didn't take very kindly. I know this was
Speaker 2: an area not known for the best race relations, and
Speaker 2: that at least one of Alonzo's friends in that day
Speaker 2: was black, so maybe that's why I had a problem
Speaker 2: with him being on the property. But It's easy to
Speaker 2: assume that if something ne faris happened to Alonzo, that
Speaker 2: maybe some sort of cover up was taking place, and
Speaker 2: that's why these people did not want his friends anywhere
Speaker 2: near the property.
Speaker 1: And so his body shows up on those banks. There's
Speaker 1: a question of whether or not it was frozen, because
Speaker 1: there's minimal decomposition. Is it possible that pretend somewhere on
Speaker 1: this property he was held for like X amount of
Speaker 1: days and then say he'd only been dead for a
Speaker 1: short while and his body was dumped at a later date,
Speaker 1: rather than him being killed right away and being put
Speaker 1: into a freezer and then disposed of the creek right
Speaker 1: before the search party.
Speaker 2: I think that's possible, because I don't think anyone has
Speaker 2: ever determined Alonzo's exact time of death. I mean, I
Speaker 2: know that doctor Mitchell, the original medical examiner, believed he
Speaker 2: had been at the creek the entire time, but it
Speaker 2: is possible that he was alive or kept in captivity
Speaker 2: for a couple of days before his body was planted
Speaker 2: at a later time. I know we talked about in
Speaker 2: our last episode the Kurt Sava case for Unsolved Mysteries,
Speaker 2: where there was always speculation that he got alcohol poison
Speaker 2: and he was kept in the basement of the duplex
Speaker 2: where the party attended was being held in hopes that
Speaker 2: he would nurse back to health. But then he died
Speaker 2: and that's why they decided to dump his body in ravine. So,
Speaker 2: for all we know, Alonzo still could have been alive
Speaker 2: and being kept somewhere during the time period his friends
Speaker 2: were searching the property.
Speaker 3: Well, let me play Devil's advocate with that. Remember when
Speaker 3: his bodi's found, there's no bruising, there's no sign of
Speaker 3: any kind of damage to the body. If you were
Speaker 3: a sober grown man and you're being held against your will,
Speaker 3: don't you think there would have had to have been
Speaker 3: some kind of restraints used against you, some type of
Speaker 3: physical altercation to get you into submission, to be quiet,
Speaker 3: to be held. Don't you think he would have fought
Speaker 3: physically to get out of a confined space. I'm thinking
Speaker 3: you might have seen signs of that on his body
Speaker 3: if he truly was being held against his will. And remember,
Speaker 3: he's wearing the same clothes he was wearing the night
Speaker 3: of the party.
Speaker 1: But what if they used a paralytic that they didn't
Speaker 1: know to test for because they just would probably do
Speaker 1: a standard panel for toxicology, would they not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they haven't really released many details about what they
Speaker 2: found during the toxicolity you've results, so I'm willing to
Speaker 2: think that if he was given something like a paralytic
Speaker 2: that it could have been missed during the original autopsy.
Speaker 1: So the theory pushed forward by Alonzo's family is that
Speaker 1: when Lynn County Sheriff Marvin Stitz granted them permission to
Speaker 1: search the property, word got back to the people who
Speaker 1: were responsible for Alonzo's death, so they responded by placing
Speaker 1: his body on the creek bank for the family to find.
Speaker 1: But where did they keep the body for nearly a month?
Speaker 1: The mild level of decomposition on Alonzo's body really seems
Speaker 1: to go against the idea that he was lying out
Speaker 1: in the elements for weeks, and since he was carrying
Speaker 1: personal possessions which should not have noticeable water damage, it's
Speaker 1: unlikely that he was submerged in Middle Creek. This is
Speaker 1: why a theory has spread around that the body was
Speaker 1: kept inside a freezer for a few weeks, And I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons this rumor caught buyer is
Speaker 1: because a prominent family from the area who were suspected
Speaker 1: of being complicit in Alonzo's death apparently owned a restaurant
Speaker 1: with a large freezer. All that being said, it would
Speaker 1: be incredibly risky and brazen to store a body of
Speaker 1: a murder victim at your place of business. In fact,
Speaker 1: why even hold onto the body to begin with. Lacine
Speaker 1: is surrounded by a lot of open land, so there
Speaker 1: would be plenty of spots to bury a victim and
Speaker 1: ensure he would never be found. But then perhaps the
Speaker 1: responsible parties felt that if Alonzo continued to remain a
Speaker 1: missing person, people would keep returning to the area to
Speaker 1: keep searching for him for years to come, so they
Speaker 1: felt they should leave them something to find.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, I hate to break this to you guys
Speaker 3: because you're from Canada, but US Americans are food loving mongrels,
Speaker 3: and it is no surprise if you walk into someone's
Speaker 3: house and they have a large, deep freezer, especially if
Speaker 3: you live in an area like we do, where hunting, fishing,
Speaker 3: those kinds of things are common. You'll have someone who has,
Speaker 3: you know, a deer head sitting in their freezer forever,
Speaker 3: or even in the freezer. Right, So I mean, I
Speaker 3: think a deep freezer. It would be kind of normal
Speaker 3: to think that you have a deep freezer. My poor
Speaker 3: mama still hoards freezer food, like she's feeding twenty people
Speaker 3: and it's just her and my dad. So it's this
Speaker 3: like nine foot deep freezer. I'm like, what are you?
Speaker 3: What's in there? You know? And there's a lock on it,
Speaker 3: which makes it really fun. But yeah, I think that
Speaker 3: the place that they were rinning could have easily had
Speaker 3: a deep freezer, or another farm, you know, two doors
Speaker 3: down where another kid lives, could have had a deep freezer.
Speaker 3: So it would not surprise me if it was more
Speaker 3: common than not in this rural area for families to
Speaker 3: have a deep freezer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking that if of this family that was
Speaker 2: believed to be responsible had a deep freezer at one
Speaker 2: of the residents or at a farm, that's probably more
Speaker 2: believable than literally putting a Lonzo's body at the restaurant
Speaker 2: where people are going in and out all the time.
Speaker 2: Of course, until the most recent autopsy, one of the
Speaker 2: biggest issues with the homicide theory was that there did
Speaker 2: not appear to be any noticeable injuries on Alonzo's body
Speaker 2: or anything to indicate his exact cause of death. Doctor
Speaker 2: Eric Mitchell, the forensic pathologist who perform the original autopsy,
Speaker 2: acknowledged that he could not rule out the possibility of
Speaker 2: drowning or strangulation, but he did seem to feel that
Speaker 2: the evidence supported the idea that Alonzo's body had been
Speaker 2: lying on the creek bank the entire time he was missing.
Speaker 2: But while Mitchell was Douglas County Corner at the time
Speaker 2: he examined Alonzo, he does have a pretty controversial background.
Speaker 2: Before he relocated to Kansas, Mitchell had worked in upstate
Speaker 2: New York as the Onondaga County Medical Examiner, but resigned
Speaker 2: from his position in nineteen ninety three over allegations of
Speaker 2: his conduct as His offenses included harvesting organs from deceased
Speaker 2: victims without the consent of their families and improperly storing
Speaker 2: skeletons and body parts inside his office. Mitchell has also
Speaker 2: been at the center of a wrongful conviction case from
Speaker 2: Douglas County, as a daycare worker named Carroty Buckhorn was
Speaker 2: charging convicted of second degree murder for her ledged role
Speaker 2: in the death of a nine month old infant named
Speaker 2: Oliver Ortise. The conviction was made possible by doctor Mitchell's
Speaker 2: testimony as he believed that Oliver had a skull fracture
Speaker 2: which was caused by his head being stepped on. But
Speaker 2: it would later come out that the boy actually died
Speaker 2: from congenital heart disease and there was never any foul play,
Speaker 2: So Bockcorn's conviction was overturned and she was released from
Speaker 2: prison after serving four years for a crime that never happened.
Speaker 2: So this obviously shows that Mitchell has some credibility issues
Speaker 2: and that he could have made mistakes during his autopsy
Speaker 2: and Alonso and missed something which showed that he was
Speaker 2: the victim of a homicide. All we know about the
Speaker 2: second autopsy from the Armed Forces medical Examiner is that
Speaker 2: Alonzo had injuries which were quote unquote inconsistent with normal
Speaker 2: patterns of decomposition. If I had to make an educated guess,
Speaker 2: I think that Alonso may have had injuries to his neck,
Speaker 2: as Mitchell even acknowledged that he couldn't rule out the
Speaker 2: possibility of strangulation. A Lonzo's body was found, the soft
Speaker 2: tissues of his neck were gone due to decomposition and
Speaker 2: damage from animals and insects. If Alonzo had some noticeable
Speaker 2: wounds on his neck when his body was placed on
Speaker 2: the creek bank. Then it's only natural that this would
Speaker 2: be the first spot that scavengers feasted upon, So I
Speaker 2: would not be surprised if the second autopsy found evidence
Speaker 2: of damage to Alonzo's neck. I don't know how true
Speaker 2: this is, but it's worth mentioning that one of the
Speaker 2: many unconfirmed rumors which is spread around the community is
Speaker 2: that a shot collar or nearly used to train dogs,
Speaker 2: was placed around Alonzo's neck in order to torture him.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, that's horrible to think about, and that
Speaker 3: could lead to what Jules was saying, where you have
Speaker 3: that he was maybe held against his will. But also,
Speaker 3: remember we talked about on the last episode, it's also
Speaker 3: possible that the FBI uncovered information that told them more
Speaker 3: that said, hey, go look at the back right of
Speaker 3: his head, Go look behind his ear, go look at
Speaker 3: at his elbow, and this is what happened. And you
Speaker 3: could have someone who had given such specific information that
Speaker 3: a relook at the body then showed a very different
Speaker 3: story because they had very specific information, and or, like
Speaker 3: you said, you simply have someone who was caught with
Speaker 3: misconduct and making you know, really wrong claims that had
Speaker 3: some big consequences relocate to this tiny town and he's
Speaker 3: just not as attentive as he should be and or
Speaker 3: makes assumptions to quickly clear his desk off, or he
Speaker 3: didn't have the information that would have allowed him to
Speaker 3: find this damage as well. So tons of options of
Speaker 3: what could have really happened when you look at the
Speaker 3: discrepancies in the autopsies.
Speaker 2: I mean, theoretically, if the rumors are true that this
Speaker 2: was a hate crime, then one possible manner of death
Speaker 2: could have been hanging, and maybe someone like lynch Alonzo
Speaker 2: or hung him from somewhere or broke his neck. And
Speaker 2: when they performed this new autopsy, that's when they discovered
Speaker 2: evidence that this might have take place. And all this
Speaker 2: evidence might have been concealed because of the decomposition and
Speaker 2: because the animals feasted upon his neck and maybe concealed
Speaker 2: any injuries he might have received.
Speaker 1: That makes me shudder, and it makes me think of
Speaker 1: Keith Warren for me too.
Speaker 2: I just thought of Keith too.
Speaker 1: Another potential issue with the foul play theory is the
Speaker 1: idea that Alonso could have been killed at the party
Speaker 1: in the presence of several witnesses, and they have all
Speaker 1: somehow managed to keep their mouths shut about it for
Speaker 1: over twenty years. Of course, there have always been allegations
Speaker 1: that this cover up was made possible because the responsible
Speaker 1: parties had ties to local law enforcement, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that's an entirely fair assessment. The Lynn County sheriff
Speaker 1: at the time was Marvin Steitz, who has since passed
Speaker 1: away and is no longer a round to comment on
Speaker 1: the case, but the Brooks family did not have many
Speaker 1: flattering things to say about him on the Unsolved Mysteries episode.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, he did not seem to take
Speaker 1: Alonzo's disappearance all that seriously at first, and if he
Speaker 1: really did try to imply that Alonzo left the party,
Speaker 1: took off his boots, and attempted to walk back to
Speaker 1: his home forty seven miles away, then yes, that's pretty ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, Stites did contact the KBI
Speaker 1: for assistance only four days after Alonzo went missing, and
Speaker 1: of course the rumors about a potential hate crime soon
Speaker 1: led to the FBI becoming involved in the investigation. If
Speaker 1: Stites was attempting to orchestra to cover up to protect
Speaker 1: Alonzo's killers. I have my doubts that he would bring
Speaker 1: in all these outside law enforcement agencies so quickly. It's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that, even though Lcine is a very
Speaker 1: small town, Alonzo's death was not the only high profile
Speaker 1: criminal case to occur during that time period. Notorious serial
Speaker 1: killer John Edward Robinson happened to live on a farm
Speaker 1: near Lycine and was arrested there only four years earlier
Speaker 1: in June two thousand. Robinson is currently serving multiple life
Speaker 1: sentences in prison and was responsible for the murders of
Speaker 1: at least eight victims, two of whom were found inside
Speaker 1: some chemical drums on his property. Marvin Stites was still
Speaker 1: Lynn County Sheriff at that time, so he was no
Speaker 1: stranger to bringing in outside agencies like the KBI and
Speaker 1: the FBI when the investigation was too large for him
Speaker 1: to handle. It's yet to be conclusively proven if Alonzo's
Speaker 1: death was actually a hate crime, but even if it wasn't,
Speaker 1: these rumors have helped ensure that the FBI is continuing
Speaker 1: to take the case seriously.
Speaker 3: And let's assume that Marvin Stites was covering for somebody
Speaker 3: I guarantee you the moment that those external agencies came in,
Speaker 3: they were not covering for anyone, and so they have
Speaker 3: nothing to gain by covering up a violent crime. They
Speaker 3: have nothing to gain by protecting law enforcement that might
Speaker 3: be crooked. And so I think that that kind of
Speaker 3: shatters that myth and that that idea behind it case.
Speaker 3: But it does make sense when the family's frustrated in
Speaker 3: and angry at stites. First of all, think about the
Speaker 3: emotional component. I'm telling you my son's missing. You didn't react.
Speaker 3: What if you had reacted sooner, would he still be alive.
Speaker 3: There's that kind of emotional weight that comes with an
Speaker 3: investigation like this. And also when you don't have an
Speaker 3: offender to blame, you start to blame everyone else. When
Speaker 3: I would work with cold case families, they would say,
Speaker 3: you know, I hate to say it, but at some
Speaker 3: point I blamed my son or I blamed my husband.
Speaker 3: Why were they out that late? Why did they go
Speaker 3: to the party. Then I blamed myself. Why did I
Speaker 3: let them go to that party? Why did I not
Speaker 3: shut it down? Why didn't I say yes, let's go
Speaker 3: to dinner instead? I blamed law enforcement. I blamed the friends.
Speaker 3: So when you don't have a target to say I
Speaker 3: will now hold you accountable and you're responsible for choosing
Speaker 3: to take the life of my son, then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I need to direct that anger towards someone
Speaker 3: to have a fair narrative. And so oftentimes, if law
Speaker 3: enforcement has not solved the case, they become the person
Speaker 3: held responsible for this being an unsolved murder, and it
Speaker 3: would likely feel that they don't care enough, or they
Speaker 3: didn't try hard enough, or it would have been solved.
Speaker 3: So that's I think a very natural reaction for a
Speaker 3: family to have, even if law enforcement had been working
Speaker 3: very hard to solve this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would make sense because we just brought up
Speaker 2: the possibility that maybe Alonso was not killed on the
Speaker 2: same night he went missing, that he was being held
Speaker 2: in captivity and was alive for a few days, in
Speaker 2: which case, perhaps if Sheriff Stites had taken his disappearance
Speaker 2: more seriously at first, they might have been able to
Speaker 2: find him or rescue him while he was still alive.
Speaker 2: So I can imagine like his family totally second guessing
Speaker 2: everything all these years later because it's still unsolved and
Speaker 2: Sheriff's Sites has become the target of some of the wrath.
Speaker 2: I know that many of Alonzo's friends and family members
Speaker 2: have always believed that racism played a role in his death,
Speaker 2: as we have how the account from his brother Billy
Speaker 2: and sister in law Cindy that people were looking at
Speaker 2: them very strangely while they were searching through Lacene. During
Speaker 2: the Unsolve Mysteries episode, there was a vivid moment when
Speaker 2: Alonzo's friend Rodney English, who also happens to be black,
Speaker 2: revisits the spot where he found Alonzo's hat and boots
Speaker 2: and then tells the camera crew that he needs to
Speaker 2: get out of there because he doesn't feel safe at all. Rodney,
Speaker 2: as well as Alonzo's family, have always felt a lot
Speaker 2: of resentment towards Alonzo's friends for leaving him behind at
Speaker 2: the party. Since all these other friends were white, I
Speaker 2: get the sense that Rodney believes they severely underestimated the
Speaker 2: racial tension surrounding Alonzo's presence that night and should never
Speaker 2: have left him alone in such a potentially hostile environment.
Speaker 2: And while Alonzo is known for being a very sweet
Speaker 2: and easygoing guy who got along with everyone, it also
Speaker 2: sounds like he would show no hesitation to confront someone
Speaker 2: if they used a Rachel slur in his presence. But
Speaker 2: if Alonzo was murdered at the farmhouse, how would these
Speaker 2: events have played out?
Speaker 3: Okay, to defend the friends, I think there's a naivity.
Speaker 3: There's you're pretty naive when you are someone who doesn't
Speaker 3: understand what it's like to be the minority. So if
Speaker 3: you know, Alonzo and I are friends and Alonzo's just
Speaker 3: my best buddy, you know, people say like, oh, I
Speaker 3: don't see the fact that he's not like me racially, right,
Speaker 3: Like I don't see that this is my friend who's
Speaker 3: you know, a black man. It's just Alonzo, right, And
Speaker 3: I'm just justin like, it just is what it is.
Speaker 3: But as kids and when they're not paying attention to
Speaker 3: the community, the circumstances, how other people react. Not everybody
Speaker 3: has the same mentality or relationship with Alonzo like these
Speaker 3: boys did. But I truly believe that those boys were
Speaker 3: just ignorant to the fact that when Alonzo leaves the
Speaker 3: safety of that group and he's a minority at a
Speaker 3: party where it's not a welcoming group necessarily, or there's
Speaker 3: these underlying currents of racist tendencies that the friends don't
Speaker 3: pick up on that Alonzo could have, and then he's
Speaker 3: left in this situation regardless with these people who don't
Speaker 3: have his best interests at heart. But I truly believe
Speaker 3: his poor friends were just like, yeah, it's Alonzo, Like
Speaker 3: we didn't even we weren't even thinking that these are
Speaker 3: some young kids going to a party to drink and
Speaker 3: being silly and pretty flippant with who's going where and when.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, I just have a lot of
Speaker 3: sympathy for the fact that these are young kids who
Speaker 3: didn't pay attention to things that they very likely should have.
Speaker 1: They got a lot of criticism too, Like I can
Speaker 1: think back to parties that I went when I was
Speaker 1: in high school or my early twenties, and like you'd
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, ash when you're like, oh, I'm fine, you
Speaker 1: just leave me behind, where either I was the person
Speaker 1: who said that or I ended up leaving because friends
Speaker 1: were like, no, no, we want to stay. And you
Speaker 1: just have this presumption that everything is going to work
Speaker 1: out okay, because you always think that it was at
Speaker 1: that age until it doesn't. And then, like you said,
Speaker 1: these kids, they've just got all of this scrutiny, and
Speaker 1: they're getting criticized by so many people. But I do
Speaker 1: think it was a brave thing to go on Unsolved
Speaker 1: Mysteries and to put yourself out there, and I do
Speaker 1: think that it shows that they do care about Alonzo.
Speaker 1: And although his one friend may have a story that
Speaker 1: changes in places, I think that, like Robin had mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: it could be that he was driving drunk that night.
Speaker 1: Just because he may come off as looking deceptive doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that he's being deceptive because he did something to Alonzo.
Speaker 2: And I do think they do seem genuinely remorseful and
Speaker 2: distraught that Alonzo died under their watch during their Unsolved
Speaker 2: Mysteries interviews, and that it still haunts them to this day.
Speaker 3: Be shame and guilt and blame and all kinds of
Speaker 3: stuff that they hold on themselves. So and like I said,
Speaker 3: you know, at forty one, looking back at assumptions, attitudes,
Speaker 3: ignorance that I had when I was twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: five twenty eight, I'm a very different person now and
Speaker 3: I understand the world more now, but back then you don't.
Speaker 3: And so I just see this group of friends who
Speaker 3: said let's be stupid and go to this party that
Speaker 3: they thought was going to be a tiny party. It
Speaker 3: ends up kind of falling apart and everybody ends up
Speaker 3: almost miscommunicating what's going on. And I just think it's
Speaker 3: a sad, sad situation. And you have tons of victims
Speaker 3: in this case, because no one's life when your best
Speaker 3: friend goes missing and then this found murdered, no one's
Speaker 3: life is the same after that. The guilt you would
Speaker 3: carry for and in feelings you would carry for his
Speaker 3: poor parents and his siblings and those kinds of things,
Speaker 3: even though you aren't to blame, that would change the
Speaker 3: whole trajectory of your life.
Speaker 1: While The Unsolved Mysteries episode features interviews with three of
Speaker 1: Alonzo's friends who attended the party with him, Justin Spragge,
Speaker 1: Daniel Thun, and Tyler Bogard, though we know there were
Speaker 1: other friends who went with them and did not appear
Speaker 1: on camera. The story goes that they decided to the
Speaker 1: night celebrating because one of these friends was leaving to
Speaker 1: join the military. But what's frustrating is that it's never
Speaker 1: been made clear why they decided to leave Gardner and
Speaker 1: travel to this particular party. In the scene, since Alonzo
Speaker 1: was described as being more of a homebody. His family
Speaker 1: was a bit surprised that he even wanted to go
Speaker 1: to the party, so I get the impression that this
Speaker 1: was not his idea and he just wanted to tag
Speaker 1: along with his other friends. While their identities have never
Speaker 1: been made public, this farmhouse was being rented by four
Speaker 1: young males at the time, but it sounds like they
Speaker 1: weren't really living there per se, and just decided to
Speaker 1: use the location as a party house, which wound up
Speaker 1: attracting people from outside the area since it was an
Speaker 1: ideal spot for underage drinking. While Alonzo was twenty three,
Speaker 1: he was actually a few years older than most of
Speaker 1: his other friends from this group, who were technically not
Speaker 1: the legal drinking age yet. I've read that one of
Speaker 1: Alonzo's friends had a loose connection with one of the
Speaker 1: four individuals renting the farmhouse, and they had once gone
Speaker 1: to the same high school together, so this might explain
Speaker 1: how they found out about this party to begin with,
Speaker 1: even though it took place nearly fifty miles away from
Speaker 1: where they lived. Now, he goes without saying that Alonzo's
Speaker 1: friends have received a lot of criticism for leaving him
Speaker 1: behind at a party, and some online sloops have gone
Speaker 1: so far as to accuse them of being responsible or
Speaker 1: being involved in Alonso's death. At the very least, there's
Speaker 1: been suspicion that these friends have never told the whole
Speaker 1: truth about what actually happened. But it's worth noting that
Speaker 1: they were extensively questioned and investigated by law enforcement who've
Speaker 1: never publicly stated that they believe any of them are
Speaker 1: withholding information. And while I would certainly find them guilty
Speaker 1: of being young, drunken, irresponsible, I would stop short of
Speaker 1: accusing them of being complicit in a murder.
Speaker 3: Imagine being question by the police when you went to
Speaker 3: this party, Like what if there was weed at the party?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: What if they were going out to meet some girls
Speaker 3: and the girls ended up being underage? Or what if
Speaker 3: there had been something that was nefarious and not legal.
Speaker 3: But you're just stupid and young, and you're going, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, they're questioning me about my missing friend, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to just kind of be tight lipped and
Speaker 3: try to answer questions about Alonzo specifically and kind of
Speaker 3: elude other information, like I was drinking and driving. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to tell them that I had smoked some weed.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell them that. And I think
Speaker 3: at some point, you know, investigators down there like, listen,
Speaker 3: I do not care about anything else right this second.
Speaker 3: I don't care if you were high as a kite.
Speaker 3: I don't care if you were doing cocaine. I don't
Speaker 3: care if you were selling drugs. I don't care if
Speaker 3: you were having sex. I don't care. The only thing
Speaker 3: I'm asking you for is tell me the truth about Alonzo.
Speaker 3: And I guarantee you by the time they get there,
Speaker 3: with these young, scared kids, they're able to get the
Speaker 3: best version of what they can remember that night about
Speaker 3: what happened to Alonzo. So did they come on off suspicious?
Speaker 3: Did their stories change? I bet their stories did change.
Speaker 3: I bet they did evolve because they got more comfortable,
Speaker 3: they remembered more things. You know, there's a chance that
Speaker 3: at some point they talked to each other and get
Speaker 3: called back to the police department. They're like, oh man,
Speaker 3: do you remember this? Oh yeah, I remember, I forgot
Speaker 3: about that. So stories do change, and it's not always
Speaker 3: because someone's involved and didn't want to tell the truth
Speaker 3: about the situation.
Speaker 2: So the very least I think you can cut some
Speaker 2: slack with Daniel Foon and Tyler Bogard as they both
Speaker 2: said goodbye to Alonzo when they left the party, and
Speaker 2: said that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Since Justin
Speaker 2: Sprague had driven Alonzo there, I'm sure they assumed that
Speaker 2: Justin would give him a ride home. There appeared to
Speaker 2: be contradictory accounts from Daniel and Justin during their Unsaw
Speaker 2: Mysteries interviews, as Daniel said that Alonzo got into an
Speaker 2: argument with another partygoer before he intervened and pulled him away. Well,
Speaker 2: Justin reported seeing no confrontations or hostility at all, and
Speaker 2: said that Alonzo was having a great time. Well, this
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean Justin as being untruthful, because if he
Speaker 2: was separated from Alonzo at the time and not present
Speaker 2: to witness this altercation with the partygoer, then he was
Speaker 2: probably unaware that anything happened had had no qualms about
Speaker 2: leaving Alonzo alone to go out and buy cigarettes. Justin's
Speaker 2: stories that he got lost and his car got stuck
Speaker 2: on those rural gravel roads, so rather than go to
Speaker 2: the trouble of making a lengthy drive back to the party,
Speaker 2: he called a friend of his named Adam and asked
Speaker 2: him to give Alonzo a ride back home to Gardner.
Speaker 2: But of course Adam was not interviewed on Unsawn Mysteries,
Speaker 2: and since we've never heard him publicly share his side
Speaker 2: of the story, it's unclear why he left without Alonzo well.
Speaker 2: On our last episode, we discussed a post about this
Speaker 2: case from the Cold Case Kansas blog, and it makes
Speaker 2: mention of a guy named Edward Smith, which I think
Speaker 2: is probably an alias for the mysterious Adam. According to
Speaker 2: this post, Edward Slash Adam did approach Alonzo about leaving
Speaker 2: the party, but Alonzo told him he wanted to stay
Speaker 2: and would get a ride home with someone else. If
Speaker 2: this account is true, then it's possible that Alonso may
Speaker 2: not have been aware that all of his other friends
Speaker 2: were gone and there was no one left to give
Speaker 2: him a ride. But if he was intoxicated, it's understandable
Speaker 2: that he wouldn't be thinking clearly. We also have all
Speaker 2: these uncorroborated rumors that Alonzo have been flirting with a
Speaker 2: white woman at the party, and if these rumors are
Speaker 2: accurate and Alonso thought he was getting somewhere well, this
Speaker 2: could provide an explanation for why he wanted to stay
Speaker 2: and turn down Adam's offer for a lift.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I was thinking right now, was that
Speaker 3: if he is with a group of guys and he's
Speaker 3: getting attention from a female, if he thinks that the
Speaker 3: females you know, thinks he's funny and they're having a
Speaker 3: good time and they're being talkative, he does what Jules
Speaker 3: and I have said we've dumbly done before, where we go, oh,
Speaker 3: just leave, just leave, I'll find a ride home, you know,
Speaker 3: because it's kind of this at twenty three years old,
Speaker 3: you're just fixated on this relationship and maybe you know,
Speaker 3: being intimate with somebody or have fun that night, and
Speaker 3: so I think you get this kind of tunnel vision,
Speaker 3: especially if you've been drinking, where you think about, I'm
Speaker 3: making progress here. I can figure out a solution once
Speaker 3: I get what I want, which could be this girl.
Speaker 3: And so I very much believe that could be potential.
Speaker 3: Where he's shoving the guys, I'll just go, just go,
Speaker 3: like you're interrupting my flow, get away from me. I'm actually,
Speaker 3: you know, getting somewhere with this girl, and then things
Speaker 3: could turn south. Let's say she has somebody else who's
Speaker 3: interested in her. Let's say it's just motivated by race.
Speaker 3: In someone's sees and says, I'm not okay with this
Speaker 3: because there are different races. But it could be a
Speaker 3: million things concerning that specific girl. I wish that a
Speaker 3: female had emerged from the party and said, yeah, we
Speaker 3: were getting along so well and then you just disappeared,
Speaker 3: or we were getting along so well and then you know,
Speaker 3: my friend Steve got really angry or something like that.
Speaker 3: But we have no information about a girl specifically at
Speaker 3: that party that's been identifying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, this rumor makes so much sense, Like
Speaker 2: I could see something escalating into violence, if Alonzo was
Speaker 2: hitting on a white girl and some of the other
Speaker 2: partygoers didn't like it. But unfortunately, we just don't have
Speaker 2: any first hand accounts to corroborate if this is true.
Speaker 1: So on August seventh, twenty twenty, The Daily Mail published
Speaker 1: an extensive article about Alonzo's case, containing a lot of
Speaker 1: information which was not mentioned during the Unsolved Mysteries episode.
Speaker 1: I shout out of his claimer that since the Daily
Speaker 1: Mail is a notorious tabloid which is known for being
Speaker 1: an unreliable source of information, I would take the information
Speaker 1: that I'm about to share with a huge grain of salt,
Speaker 1: but if their reporting is accurate, it could shed some
Speaker 1: additional insight into why Alonso was left behind at the party.
Speaker 1: Rodney English was interviewed for the article and claimed the
Speaker 1: story shared by Justin on Unsolved Mysteries it was different
Speaker 1: than the one he shared right after Alonzo went missing,
Speaker 1: as he apparently never mentioned anything about getting lost and
Speaker 1: only said that his car broke down and he was
Speaker 1: able to fix it himself by the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Alonzo's mother, Maria, also alleged that Justin has changed his
Speaker 1: story about six times over the years, while The Daily
Speaker 1: Mail spoke to an anonymous source who was supposedly close
Speaker 1: to Justin and claimed he'd received death threats since he
Speaker 1: appeared on Unsolved Mysteries and felt the show had let
Speaker 1: him down by editing out significant parts of his interview.
Speaker 1: According to this source, Justin did leave the party to
Speaker 1: go purchase cigarettes, but the episode did not mention that
Speaker 1: he was actually accompanied by another friend. They did apparently
Speaker 1: get their car stuck in the ditch, but Justin elected
Speaker 1: not to call for help because he was drunk and
Speaker 1: high at the time, since he was about to enlist
Speaker 1: in the army, he did not want a dui charge
Speaker 1: to potentially scoopings up. But if Justin was not entirely
Speaker 1: truthful about how events unfolded that night, this could provide
Speaker 1: an explanation why. However, The Daily Mail reported that phone
Speaker 1: records did support Justin's story that he used his cell
Speaker 1: phone to call Adam at the party, and that surveillance
Speaker 1: cameras showed that Justin went to a gas station and
Speaker 1: withdrew two hundred dollars from an ATM. Justin and his
Speaker 1: friend then went to a strip club, but they wound
Speaker 1: up being ejected from there for unknown reasons. Thus far,
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail is the only media outlet I've seen
Speaker 1: which has published this account of Justin's story. But if
Speaker 1: it's true, then it gives him an alibi placing him
Speaker 1: away from the farmhouse and would clear him of any
Speaker 1: direct involvement in Alonzo's death. So yes, while Justin may
Speaker 1: have been irresponsible that night, it sounds like he does
Speaker 1: not have any further insight into how or why Alonso
Speaker 1: was killed, And during his Unsolved Mysteries interview, Justin became
Speaker 1: fairly emotional, so I get the sense that he was
Speaker 1: genuinely guilt ridden and remorseful about not being there for
Speaker 1: his friend.
Speaker 3: Let's say, let's say you got stuck, you fixed your car,
Speaker 3: you went the wrong way, and then you end up
Speaker 3: going to a strip club. I could see omitting that.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're sitting there, You're talking about somebody who
Speaker 3: has their own life, has their own career, has their
Speaker 3: own placement in society, has perhaps their own family. And
Speaker 3: you sit there and you say, you know, why didn't
Speaker 3: he tell us he was at a strip club? Well,
Speaker 3: he's getting ready to go into the army. Is it
Speaker 3: something that he was worried would make him look bad?
Speaker 3: Is it something he was worried his parents would be
Speaker 3: embarrassed about. Is it something you know five years later
Speaker 3: that he doesn't want his wife to know. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's other explanations for a change in stories, And there's
Speaker 3: also the way that our memories changed. They're malleable, they're pliable.
Speaker 3: When you sit there and you have a dream about
Speaker 3: the incident, you wake up and you wonder what was
Speaker 3: fact and what was the dream. When you talk to
Speaker 3: someone else, your story shifts a little bit. So I
Speaker 3: believe you know, by your fifth interview, it's possible a
Speaker 3: piece of information has been added or taken away. I
Speaker 3: don't think Justin seems like a person who is a
Speaker 3: dark force in this story. I think he was an
Speaker 3: other kid making some really bad decisions and had no
Speaker 3: idea that the consequences because he had no anticipation that
Speaker 3: his friend was going to pass away that night. He
Speaker 3: thought that he was leaving his friend and many other
Speaker 3: people that knew Alonzo, and that his buddy would make
Speaker 3: it back just the way he said he would.
Speaker 2: There's another detail mentioned in the Daily Mail article which
Speaker 2: I think might shed some light on all the confusion
Speaker 2: surrounding the circumstances of Alonzo's disappearance. The party was held
Speaker 2: with daylight saving time took and the clocks moved forward
Speaker 2: an hour at two am on the morning of April
Speaker 2: to fourth. For this reason, investigators had a hard time
Speaker 2: nailing down a precise timeline, because when you're dealing with
Speaker 2: a bunch of partygoers who have been drinking, I'm sure
Speaker 2: many of them are not going to be keeping track
Speaker 2: of when the clocks move forward. Where I have an
Speaker 2: accurate recollection of what time certain events occurred, it's been
Speaker 2: reported that a fight took place at the party sometime
Speaker 2: around two or three am, although it's unclear if Alonzo
Speaker 2: was involved, and the original reporting on this story said
Speaker 2: the last time Alonzo was seen was at around three
Speaker 2: or four AM. I'm sure these inconsistencies are the results
Speaker 2: of different witnesses having different recollections of what time these
Speaker 2: events took place, as I doubt that all of them
Speaker 2: would have taken daylight saving time into account. But what's
Speaker 2: important is that we don't seem to have a solid,
Speaker 2: concrete account of the last time Alonso was confirmed to
Speaker 2: be alive.
Speaker 3: What's interesting, though, is that if you did look at
Speaker 3: that time frame, it's two thirty to three or three
Speaker 3: to four, that could be all the same same hour,
Speaker 3: right if it was a change in the clock. We
Speaker 3: didn't always have iPhones that switched, you know, immediately at midnight,
Speaker 3: or sometimes my iPhone doesn't switch at midnight, it's which
Speaker 3: is at like four am. So isn't it possible that
Speaker 3: that could all just be the same timeframe?
Speaker 2: It is? Yeah, I think that is a possibility. And
Speaker 2: what's so frustrating about this case is that we just
Speaker 2: don't have any information about when this party really ended
Speaker 2: and when people started trickling out of there and going home.
Speaker 2: So we've talked about how it seems unlikely that if
Speaker 2: there were a couple dozen people there and something happened
Speaker 2: to Alonzo, that that many people would keep a secret.
Speaker 2: So that's why it would be useful to know, like
Speaker 2: how many people were still at that party by the
Speaker 2: time something happened to Alonzo.
Speaker 3: And remember there was another party going on too, some
Speaker 3: people were leaving and going to that other party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it makes me wonder like how many people
Speaker 2: were present who might be covering some sort of secret.
Speaker 1: During her interview on Unsolved Mysteries, Cindy said that when
Speaker 1: she and Billy traveled to the scene to search for
Speaker 1: Alonzo and checked out the farmhouse, she looked in through
Speaker 1: the window and saw that it was empty and it
Speaker 1: did not look like a place where there had been
Speaker 1: a huge party the night before. The wording is a
Speaker 1: bit ambiguous, so I'm not sure if Cindy's trying to
Speaker 1: imply that the house are being completely cleaned up or
Speaker 1: cleared out, but this could be taken as a sign
Speaker 1: that something happened to Alonzo there and the responsible parties
Speaker 1: made sure to do a very thorough cleanup job in
Speaker 1: order to get rid of potential evidence. One thing that
Speaker 1: has never made sense to me is why Alonzo's hat
Speaker 1: and boots were found in separate ditches across the road
Speaker 1: from each other near the end of the farmhouse driveway.
Speaker 1: We didn't find it likely that Alonzo would take off
Speaker 1: his boots there and walk back onto the property towards
Speaker 1: the creek, but if he was murdered, it's also weird
Speaker 1: that someone would get rid of his boots at that
Speaker 1: particular spot. Rodney English theorized that someone may have driven
Speaker 1: to the end of the driveway and tossed the hat
Speaker 1: and one of the boots in a ditch across the
Speaker 1: road from a moving vehicle, and then tossed the other
Speaker 1: boot into a different ditch after they turned right and
Speaker 1: started heading in that direction. When Justin picked up Alonzo
Speaker 1: at his residence that night, he said that Alonzo put
Speaker 1: on two pairs of socks and rolled one pair down
Speaker 1: to tie his boot tighter since he'd recently suffered an
Speaker 1: ankle injury. But if Alonzo's ankle was bothering him that night,
Speaker 1: could he have decided to remove his boots at the
Speaker 1: party before something happened. If Alonzo was not wearing his
Speaker 1: boots when he was killed, this could explain why they
Speaker 1: were found step or from his body. But then why
Speaker 1: not just get rid of the boots altogether rather than
Speaker 1: leave them out in the open at a spot near
Speaker 1: the farmhouse. This has caused speculation that perhaps the responsible
Speaker 1: parties wanted the boots to be found in order to
Speaker 1: send some sort of message, which adds to the whole
Speaker 1: aura of Lacine being a close knit small town concealing
Speaker 1: a dark secret, with most of the residents feeling powerless
Speaker 1: to do anything.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if you would take your boot off if
Speaker 3: your ankle was hurting and you are in a place
Speaker 3: that you're unfamiliar with. You know, my husband won't take
Speaker 3: his boots off unless he's done for the day, because
Speaker 3: he's like, my feet hurt so bad. My feet are hurting,
Speaker 3: and he's like, if I take him off, it's almost
Speaker 3: like I get more pain in my feet because I
Speaker 3: have no support or anything going on. So I wonder
Speaker 3: if he would have left the boots on to provide
Speaker 3: the support for that ankle instead of saying, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: going to take it off and have no stability on
Speaker 3: my foot.
Speaker 1: And was this an inside slash outside party, because if
Speaker 1: it was and people were kind of going in the
Speaker 1: farmhouse and out into the yard, which it kind of
Speaker 1: sounds like from what they've said, then I would find
Speaker 1: it unlikely that he would take off his boots because
Speaker 1: that would be the only thing that would be supporting
Speaker 1: his ankle.
Speaker 3: And remember, there's one hundred people, so I think it
Speaker 3: has to be in and out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's never really been clarified how much was spent
Speaker 2: inside and outside at the party. But it was April,
Speaker 2: so it would have been warm enough I think for
Speaker 2: people to be hanging out outside.
Speaker 1: And like Ashley just said, there's one hundred people, So
Speaker 1: good luck fitting one hundred people inside a house unless
Speaker 1: it's really big with the square footage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Now. The aforementioned Daily Mail article also said
Speaker 2: that a number of different sources gave them the name
Speaker 2: of an out of towner who picked a fight with Alonso,
Speaker 2: though it's unclear if this is the same individual who
Speaker 2: was involved in the argument that Daniel Foon had witnessed,
Speaker 2: but the story goes that when this guy left the party,
Speaker 2: he drove nearly two hundred miles out of state, and
Speaker 2: he was one of the partygoers who refused to take
Speaker 2: a polygraph and lawyered up when investigators attempted to question him.
Speaker 2: While I'm not saying this guy was responsible for Alonzo's death,
Speaker 2: it does open up the interesting possibility that Alonzo was
Speaker 2: killed by someone who did not actually live in the
Speaker 2: Lacine area. If Alonzo realized that all of his friends
Speaker 2: had left and he no longer had a ride home,
Speaker 2: could he have accepted a ride from a stranger he
Speaker 2: just met at the party that night. Could this person
Speaker 2: have murdered Alonzo at another location and then brought his
Speaker 2: body back to Lcine and planted it on the bank
Speaker 2: of Middle Creek. What's interesting is that when doctor Mitchell
Speaker 2: performed his original autopsy, it sounds like he was unable
Speaker 2: to provide a conclusive determination of how long Alonso had
Speaker 2: been dead before he was found, though he was inclined
Speaker 2: to believe that his body had been lying on the
Speaker 2: creek bank during the entire time period he was missing.
Speaker 2: But how can we be so certain that Alonzo was
Speaker 2: dead during that entire twenty seven day window. We've heard
Speaker 2: all these wild theories about Alonzo's body being kept inside
Speaker 2: a freezer in order to explain why he had such
Speaker 2: mild decomposition. But the alternate explanation is that someone could
Speaker 2: have abducted him and held him in captivity for a
Speaker 2: few weeks before he was killed, and they then proceeded
Speaker 2: to bring his body back to the property and dump
Speaker 2: him on the creek bank. Of course, I'm not entirely
Speaker 2: sure why they would keep him alive this entire time,
Speaker 2: as it's not like he had any noticeable injuries on
Speaker 2: his body to suggest he was tortured. But then again,
Speaker 2: maybe something was found during the most recent autopsy to
Speaker 2: indicate that Alonzo experienced violence or torture before he died.
Speaker 3: This almost makes me feel like a Matthew Shepherd kind
Speaker 3: of thing, where you had someone who wanted to hurt
Speaker 3: Matthew Shepherd because of his sexuality. But they targeted him
Speaker 3: in a way that they befriended him and they isolated him,
Speaker 3: and they made promises to him of like, hey, let
Speaker 3: us take you home, let's go hang out, let us
Speaker 3: take you home, and then their whole plan all along
Speaker 3: was to attack him. And then they placed his body
Speaker 3: on that fence that night and so I'm wondering could
Speaker 3: something like that have happened where someone got frustrated they
Speaker 3: liked the girl that he was talking to, but instead
Speaker 3: of in front of all these people being rude to him,
Speaker 3: they befriend him and manipulate him to a point where, hey,
Speaker 3: man will take you home. Hey buddy, why'n't you ride
Speaker 3: with us? And they get him in the car under
Speaker 3: pretenses that they're going to be good to him, and
Speaker 3: then turn on him when they're away from the rest
Speaker 3: of the party gooders, So it rose absolutely no suspicion
Speaker 3: with anybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would make sense to me as well. And theoretically,
Speaker 2: like I said, if they killed Alonzo at another location
Speaker 2: or kept him in captivity and the people from Lecine
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with it, they may have decided, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm going to leave his body in the spot where
Speaker 2: I originally took him from so that it'll divert the
Speaker 2: suspicion away from me.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense to me if it was some
Speaker 1: guy that also liked this girl who's from the prominent family.
Speaker 1: But it would also make sense to me if it
Speaker 1: was say a relative of hers, maybe a cousin, maybe
Speaker 1: a brother, somebody who is connected to the family who
Speaker 1: thinks I'm not going to stand for that. This is
Speaker 1: somebody who I don't know how they would have viewed him,
Speaker 1: if they viewed him his mixed race or they viewed
Speaker 1: him as black, but either way they are thinking our
Speaker 1: family is white and we aren't going to invite somebody
Speaker 1: who is from the outside in in that capacity. And
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense to me, like you said, Ash,
Speaker 1: that they could have befriended him, and they could have
Speaker 1: gotten close and then used that against him at another location,
Speaker 1: whatever the case. Coming up with a concrete theory about
Speaker 1: what actually happened to Alonzo is incredibly difficult because even
Speaker 1: though there are a ton of rumors, gossip, and hearsay
Speaker 1: about events which may have taken place at that party,
Speaker 1: there are very few verifiable facts. Other than Justin Tyler
Speaker 1: and Daniel, no one who was in attendance that night
Speaker 1: have gone on the record to speak about it. And
Speaker 1: assuming these three guys are telling the truth, they would
Speaker 1: have already been gone before the events which caused Alonzo's
Speaker 1: death took place. Even though we've heard reports about people
Speaker 1: from the party lawyering up and refusing to be questioned
Speaker 1: or take polygraphs. That doesn't necessarily mean they're guilty of
Speaker 1: anything or concealing information, because refusing to take a polygraph
Speaker 1: or speak to the police without an attorney is always
Speaker 1: considered to be sound legal advice, even if you're an
Speaker 1: innocent person. It sounds like the lack of a coherent
Speaker 1: timeline has always been one of the biggest obstacles for
Speaker 1: this investigation, because we know at some point that party
Speaker 1: had to come to an end, but we have no
Speaker 1: idea if Alonzo was still there at that time and
Speaker 1: when the last confirmed sighting of him took place. I've
Speaker 1: always found it hard to believe that something bad could
Speaker 1: have happened to Alonzo at the party in full view
Speaker 1: of several witnesses, because I just don't believe that many
Speaker 1: people could keep a secret for two decades. Remember, this
Speaker 1: case has been investigated by many agencies, including the KBI
Speaker 1: and the FBI, so even if local law enforcement was
Speaker 1: witnesses would have had many avenues to turn to if
Speaker 1: they wanted to talk. Granted, we're not privy to all
Speaker 1: the details of this investigation, so perhaps people would have
Speaker 1: come forward to share important information with the authorities, but
Speaker 1: they still don't have the necessary evidence to file charges
Speaker 1: against anyone. I still wouldn't rule out the possibility that
Speaker 1: Alonzo's death did not actually take place at the party,
Speaker 1: but instead occurred after he hitched a ride with someone
Speaker 1: who harms him at another location. If this is what happened,
Speaker 1: there may only be one person or a small handful
Speaker 1: of people who know the truth about how he died.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to go with that. I'm really leaning
Speaker 3: towards this idea that he needed to get home, and
Speaker 3: it was the party was winding down. There probably weren't
Speaker 3: a lot of people there anymore. People were already dispersing
Speaker 3: and or were so intoxicated at the time they're not
Speaker 3: paying attention. But he's befriended by somebody who says, I'll
Speaker 3: give you a ride, buddy, and so zero people raise
Speaker 3: an eyebrow. Zero people are on to that situation. And
Speaker 3: then once in that truck, we have no idea what happens.
Speaker 3: And then they're discarding his items and his shoes, his hat,
Speaker 3: those types of things. I don't know. I just have
Speaker 3: to lean more towards that the idea that people lawyered
Speaker 3: up or didn't take a polygraph test. My goodness. I
Speaker 3: think there's a host of families, especially in small towns,
Speaker 3: that they could have an attorney friend who said, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 3: you tell your kids if they're ever questioned, the answer
Speaker 3: is not without an attorney present, and no way will
Speaker 3: they take a polygraph. So I don't see that as
Speaker 3: being a clear sign that these kids knew. But I
Speaker 3: definitely think that it's somebody who was at that party
Speaker 3: who said, Hey, I'm going to isolate this man away
Speaker 3: from this group, and then I can do whatever I want,
Speaker 3: punish him, get revenge, quiet him, whatever their goal was,
Speaker 3: And I'm starting to lean towards that's how that occurred.
Speaker 1: I just don't see how doing a polygraph test, unless,
Speaker 1: for example, you're the parents and your child is missing,
Speaker 1: if you want law enforcement to eliminate you as a
Speaker 1: suspect so they can focus their energies elsewhere, I could
Speaker 1: see doing a polygraph in that context, because you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that they're not focusing on you and
Speaker 1: that they're doing everything that they can outside of the
Speaker 1: family unit. But in this case, people who went to
Speaker 1: the party, they might have a myriad of things to hide,
Speaker 1: so they might register as deceptive on a bunch of
Speaker 1: different questions or come up as inconclusive. So if it
Speaker 1: were my kid, or even if I was in my
Speaker 1: twenties and know what I know now, I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing a polygraph.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be a thing where they took illegal
Speaker 2: drugs at the party, or they did underage drinking. So
Speaker 2: even though they may have had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: Alonzo's death or have any information about what happened to them,
Speaker 2: they're probably paranoid that it's going to register on the
Speaker 2: polygraph test if they don't tell the full truth about
Speaker 2: what happened, and so they would have every reason to
Speaker 2: refuse to do it.
Speaker 1: Imagine getting asked a question like is there anything you're
Speaker 1: hiding about the day Alonzo died or about the day
Speaker 1: Alonzo went missing, and you're doing some kind of drugs
Speaker 1: that are like more than we'd write something that would
Speaker 1: be a Schedule one narcotic, and you don't want to
Speaker 1: admit that to your parents or to police. You don't
Speaker 1: want anyone to know that, And so it would come
Speaker 1: up that you are lying or you're being deceptive on
Speaker 1: that polygraph. But the reality is you know nothing about
Speaker 1: Alonzo's death. There just is stuff that you're not telling
Speaker 1: the police, or.
Speaker 3: Hey, did you contribute it all to the death of Alonzo?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I poured him a drink. Yeah, I uh was the
Speaker 3: one who did drugs with him. Yeah, I'm the one
Speaker 3: who introduced him to the people there. You know, Like,
Speaker 3: so am I quote responsible? Maybe because I interacted with
Speaker 3: him and I was part of his night that evening,
Speaker 3: So who knows of one of my actions quote contributed
Speaker 3: to his death?
Speaker 1: And I think that's why it really does depend on
Speaker 1: the polygrapher, because I think they're supposed to be asking
Speaker 1: the same question like three different ways, so that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you said something like that, did you contribute to
Speaker 1: the death? You could say did you directly contribute to
Speaker 1: the death of ants contribute? If you asked it several ways,
Speaker 1: you could get different answers. So if you've got somebody
Speaker 1: who's only asking it one way, then you could come
Speaker 1: up with tests that are full of deception.
Speaker 2: One other thing I wanted to mention is that there's
Speaker 2: a website about this case at Alonzo Brooks dot com
Speaker 2: and it has been used to promote an upcoming documentary
Speaker 2: series and accompanying podcasts about the case, which is being
Speaker 2: put together by a Kansas based filmmaker named Josh Pratt.
Speaker 2: According to the website, Pratt has been working on this
Speaker 2: project for several years, even before the Unsolved Mysteries episode
Speaker 2: came out, and it's going to contain a number of
Speaker 2: interviews with people connected to the case, including Alonzo's friends
Speaker 2: and relatives, law enforcement officials, and even persons of interest. However,
Speaker 2: I have no idea when the series is going to
Speaker 2: be completed or when its projected release date might be,
Speaker 2: and perhaps the reclassification of Alonzo's death as a homicide
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one has sent the project in an
Speaker 2: entire life different direction. Whatever the case, if and when
Speaker 2: this series does get released, it may finally shed some
Speaker 2: additional light on things and answer a lot of the
Speaker 2: questions I've had. By all accounts, Alonzo Brooks was a
Speaker 2: very nice person who loved his family and never caused
Speaker 2: any trouble. So if he was the victim of a
Speaker 2: hate crime and the responsible parties have managed to get
Speaker 2: away with it for two decades, then that's a terrible injustice.
Speaker 2: We still can't be one hundred percent certain that his
Speaker 2: death was a hate crime. But even if that wasn't
Speaker 2: the actual motive, a young man still had his life
Speaker 2: stolen away from him. When I first watched the Unsolved
Speaker 2: Mysteries episode back in twenty twenty, I have to admit
Speaker 2: that I had mixed feelings about Alonzo's death being a homicide,
Speaker 2: as I felt his death could have been some sort
Speaker 2: of accident, such as a negative reaction to drugs or alcohol,
Speaker 2: and someone decided to conceal what happened before placing his
Speaker 2: body out in the open. However, the results of the
Speaker 2: latest autopsy do seem to confirm with absolute certainty that
Speaker 2: Alonzo was murdered, and even though it's been four years
Speaker 2: since that announcement was made, I do hope that things
Speaker 2: are still going on behind the scenes to build a
Speaker 2: case against the responsible perpetrator or perpetrators, and that they
Speaker 2: will eventually face justice. So if you have been to
Speaker 2: have any information about the murder of Alonzo Brooks, please
Speaker 2: contact the Kansas City FBI office at eight one six
Speaker 2: by one two eight two zero zero. That's eight one
Speaker 2: six by one two eight two zero zero. You can
Speaker 2: also submit a tips through the FBI website or called
Speaker 2: the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers Tips Hotline at eight
Speaker 2: one six four seven four tips. That's eight one six
Speaker 2: four seven four eight four seven seven Jules Ashley. Any
Speaker 2: final thoughts in this case.
Speaker 3: This one's heartbreaking when you think about the way that
Speaker 3: the families had to navigate the degrief here. When they
Speaker 3: first called and they said he didn't come home, my
Speaker 3: son is missing. We need your help, and they're told, well,
Speaker 3: we have to wait forty eight hours, and then they're
Speaker 3: on their way trying to do their own invent instigation,
Speaker 3: turned away by the man on the ATV, to leave
Speaker 3: the feeling that my voice doesn't matter, that no one
Speaker 3: listened when I said something was wrong, No one listened
Speaker 3: to us when we were begging them to search to
Speaker 3: help us find him. We had to go and find
Speaker 3: him ourselves twenty seven days later, and then you know,
Speaker 3: there's this continued flee from the family to say, listen,
Speaker 3: there were one hundred people there that night. Someone saw something,
Speaker 3: and so they're right. It's likely that people know tiny
Speaker 3: little piece of information that seemed incredibly insignificant, and yet
Speaker 3: if they came forward and if they were able to
Speaker 3: share those there's potential that this case could have a resolution.
Speaker 3: But the idea that you know, no one's talking and
Speaker 3: that their own voices are not being heard has to
Speaker 3: be something that completely complicates and elongates the weight of
Speaker 3: the grief that they're feeling. Alonzo went to a party
Speaker 3: that night, a kid that doesn't really even get out
Speaker 3: of his house. He's a homebody, and you know, so
Speaker 3: he went to spend time with his friends and to
Speaker 3: go along with their plan, and something that should have
Speaker 3: been so innocent and so fun in it in his death.
Speaker 3: And so I'm praying that this is one of those
Speaker 3: cases that because there is a tension, because people are
Speaker 3: finally listening, is this a case that actually could be solved.
Speaker 1: I feel so deeply for Alonzo's parents and for all
Speaker 1: of those who loved him, and for his friends that
Speaker 1: appeared on the documentary. I think, of course, it looks
Speaker 1: like they might be hiding certain things, but I don't
Speaker 1: think they're hiding anything to do with the death of Alonzo.
Speaker 1: I think there is a lot of guilt there, and
Speaker 1: like Robin mentioned earlier, when I watched it, I felt
Speaker 1: genuine emotions watching them talk about it. It felt like
Speaker 1: there was remorse, and not remorse in the sense that
Speaker 1: I'm sorry because I hurt this person, but remorse because
Speaker 1: they weren't there in the capacity that they felt like
Speaker 1: they should, and they've taken a lot of heat for that.
Speaker 1: This case has just made so much more complex, given
Speaker 1: the fact that there's all these conspiracy theories about prominent
Speaker 1: families and a potential white girl from a prominent family
Speaker 1: and Alonzo being quite drunk and getting into a verbal
Speaker 1: altercation with somebody. So there opens up all these different possibilities.
Speaker 1: Because there weren't his friends there to basically hold him
Speaker 1: back and go buddy, like it's time to walk away,
Speaker 1: it's time to leave. He was left to his own devices,
Speaker 1: and nobody else is talking about exactly what went down
Speaker 1: that night. I honestly don't know if he was taken
Speaker 1: somewhere else or his body was frozen, but it does
Speaker 1: seem odd that he ended up somewhere that had previously
Speaker 1: been searched. There is a possibility that he could have
Speaker 1: been frozen. I think it is less likely that he
Speaker 1: was held at another location for close to a month
Speaker 1: and then killed and then put there. But the idea
Speaker 1: of the shot caller was brought up and like that
Speaker 1: is a possibility, But it seems like if you're going
Speaker 1: to hold somebody there for a long period of time,
Speaker 1: that you're going to do so because you want to
Speaker 1: torture them with more than just a shocking dog collar.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I have no idea. This is just
Speaker 1: a case that has left me with more questions than answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this made a vivid impression on me when I
Speaker 2: saw it on the Unsolved Mysteries reboot about five years ago,
Speaker 2: and I talked at length about how some of the
Speaker 2: cases they've shown are ones where it does seem that
Speaker 2: they're obvious suicides or accidental deaths, and that the show
Speaker 2: is trying to make the stories look a lot more
Speaker 2: mysterious than they really are. But this one is definitely
Speaker 2: the exception to the rule, because this is a rare
Speaker 2: case where it was technically an unexplained, undetermined death when
Speaker 2: they originally featured it on the show, and then one
Speaker 2: year later they gave a new autopsy and were able
Speaker 2: to confirm with one hundred percent certainty that Alonzo was
Speaker 2: the victim of a homicide and that there was a
Speaker 2: crime here that needed to be solved. It is frustrating
Speaker 2: that it's now been four years and we still don't
Speaker 2: seem to have any further answers about what happened, but
Speaker 2: I do think that law enforcement is vigorously working on
Speaker 2: it behind the scenes, and for all we know, maybe
Speaker 2: the big break they need is for someone to come
Speaker 2: forward with in because if it took place at a party,
Speaker 2: then it's possible that there are people out there who
Speaker 2: know the truth and have kept silent about it for
Speaker 2: two decades, and we have so many uncorroborated rumors. I mean,
Speaker 2: some people think that because Alonzo was a minority in
Speaker 2: a predominantly white area and was causing some friction at
Speaker 2: this party, that maybe he was the victim of a
Speaker 2: hate crime, And just hearing about the decomposition on his
Speaker 2: neck has made me suspect that that might have been
Speaker 2: the source of his homicide. That he could have been
Speaker 2: murdered by being lynched literally or being strangled to death
Speaker 2: or having his neck broken, and that's why it was
Speaker 2: missed on the autopsy the first time around. So if
Speaker 2: it was and Alonzo was targeted because of the color
Speaker 2: of his skin, then this would fit the definition of
Speaker 2: a hate crime and whoever was responsible definitely deserves to
Speaker 2: face justice. I mean, I can't come up with the
Speaker 2: theory of what happened with the information we have. I
Speaker 2: don't know where Alonzo was during the twenty seven days
Speaker 2: he was missing, why his body wound up on that
Speaker 2: creek bank after all that time, But I do not
Speaker 2: believe he was there the entire time when the original
Speaker 2: search effort took place. So something fishy definitely has been
Speaker 2: going on here. And I do sense that there are
Speaker 2: a number of people in this small town in rural
Speaker 2: Kansas who have their own ideas about what happened but
Speaker 2: have not talked. So it's now been over twenty years,
Speaker 2: and Alonzo's family definitely deserves to see justice done because
Speaker 2: it is long overdue.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 2: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 2: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 2: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 2: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 2: with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
Speaker 2: tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 2: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 2: The Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
Speaker 2: Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier free
Speaker 2: the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer
Speaker 2: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
Speaker 2: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 2: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 2: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 2: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 2: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
Speaker 2: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 2: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 2: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
Speaker 2: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Speaker 2: Tier three.
Speaker 4: So I want to let you know a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Jeweles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
Speaker 4: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Speaker 4: Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
Speaker 4: so they're not very many, but they're just too short
Speaker 4: to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
Speaker 4: so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
Speaker 4: them in the show notes.
Speaker 2: So I want to thank you all for listening, and
Speaker 2: any chance you have to share us on social media
Speaker 2: with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
Speaker 2: appreciate it. You can email us at the path went
Speaker 2: Chili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on
Speaker 2: Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure
Speaker 2: to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call
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Speaker 4: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy