Alonzo Brooks

0:00This episode of Voices for Justice is sponsored by Shopify. I think we all know that the holidays can become overwhelming pretty quickly. So the sooner you get things done, the better. For both shoppers and businesses, the best time to score great deals during the holidays is Black Friday slash Cyber Monday weekend. Whether you're an established business or someone who's going through their first Black Friday slash Cyber Monday, you know that the most important thing you need is a platform that can handle everything that's about to be thrown at you. You have to make sure that your tools and platform are ready for anything that comes your way during the busiest weekend of the year.

0:36And that's why you need Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. From household names to entrepreneurs who will be participating in their first Black Friday slash Cyber Monday this year. If you want to give your customers the best experience possible this holiday season, you need Shopify. This Black Friday, join thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash justice. That's shopify.com slash justice. Go to shopify.com slash justice and make this Black Friday one to remember.

1:21This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios upcoming comedy, Ella McKay. From Academy Award-winning writer-director James L. Brooks, Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay, an idealistic young woman who juggles family and work in a story about the people you love and how to survive them. Featuring an all-star cast, including Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon, Kumail Nanjiani, Iowa Debris, Julie Kavner, with Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. Ella McKay, in theaters December 12. Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder.

2:02This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.

2:26Today, I'm discussing the case of Alonzo Brooks. In April 2004, 23-year-old Alonzo made a decision that he could have never anticipated would result in his murder. He just wanted to go to a party with some of his friends. But when he didn't return home the next morning, the rumors were already swirling about what may have happened to Alonzo in the small town of Lacine, Kansas that night. Over 20 years later, Alonzo's case has been riddled with misinformation, conflicting stories about what happened that night, and missteps by law enforcement. This is the case of Alonzo Brooks. Alonzo comes from a very large, blended family.

3:09In addition to his siblings and step-siblings, he also had 18 nieces and nephews, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. But Alonzo is really treated as the baby, because he's the youngest of his mother's biological children. He grew up mainly in Topeka, Kansas, where he had a tight-knit group of friends, where they did what a lot of us did growing up in the late 90s. They played outside. They listened to music, played basketball, and enjoyed competitive games of King of the Hill. After high school, Alonzo moved about an hour away to Gardner, Kansas with his mom and I assume his stepfather, Stuart.

3:47But I couldn't find reporting to confirm that. Alonzo soon gets a job working for a janitorial and maintenance service. Now, despite this being quite a culture jump from living in the capital of Kansas versus Gardner with a fraction of the population, Alonzo seems happy and develops a new group of friends in town. It's this group of friends that he meets with on the night of April 3rd, 2004. They decide to go to a party in an even smaller town, Lucene, Kansas. Now, a variety of reporting on this case says that the whole reason either this party was happening or that Alonzo went out at all was to celebrate somebody leaving for the military.

4:27I found reporting that says Alonzo's friend Justin had recently enlisted, but I never found definitive reporting about who they were celebrating that night or why it was happening in Lucene. Other people have said the party was a last hurrah after the four men renting the home were evicted. I warned you that this case is filled with conflicting stories. So for some reason that's not exactly agreed upon across reporting, Alonzo and his friends decide to go to this party over an hour away in Lucene. And this is a big group, so they end up splitting between at least three vehicles Alonzo's friend Daniel Foon is in one car with someone named Nikki Tyler Bohard is in another vehicle And Alonzo is driven to the party by his friend Justin Sprague They make the about an hour drive to the middle of nowhere to get to Lucene And this is a teeny tiny town with about 1 ,100 residents in 2004 They're so small they don't even have a grocery store, just a gas station And while the party house is off the freeway, it's not a highly populated or big freeway.

5:32It basically looks like any two-lane residential street. Again, just a very remote area. But Alonzo and his friends all make their way to the party. And when Alonzo gets there, he's ready to have a good time. He gets out of the car and yells, who wants a beer? One thing I think all of his friends do agree on is that Alonzo was having a great time. This party was huge. It's kind of like this older farmhouse, but it's on this huge property with trees, this long driveway, and it has its own creek. It's like a party paradise. There's lots of room to move around and space to be loud without disrupting anybody.

6:11It's a rager. Some have estimated that there were up to 200 people at this party. But most law enforcement sources say it was closer to 100, which is still insane. That's like a tenth of the population of the entire town of Lucene. Which, according to Alonzo's friends, they really were the out-of-towners at the party, and estimate that only six to eight people were from Gardner. So, while they are all having a good time drinking, playing games, and just partying, they are surrounded by strangers. But again, it does seem like they're all having a good time. It's mostly younger people like Alonzo and his friends, with the oldest person maybe being in their mid to late 20s at best.

6:55About an hour into the party, Daniel sees Alonzo playing a game in the kitchen, and they take some shots of Jaeger together. At some point, Daniel sees somebody that he wants to say hello to and gets up to do that. But when he turns around, he sees Alonzo face to face with another man. They're obviously about to get in some type of fight, so Daniel steps in and breaks it up. And you're probably asking what I'm asking right now. who is this man that was trying to fight with Alonzo? Well, we don't know, even to this day. But Daniel breaks it up, and the party seemingly continues without issue. Not long after this, Nikki gets a call about another party and wants to leave to go there.

7:37So since that's Daniel's ride, he tells Alonzo that he's going to the other party and says goodbye. Shortly after this, Tyler also leaves at about 11pm. That leaves Justin and Alonzo at the party. But according to Justin, at some point he runs out of cigarettes, and asks Alonzo to bum one, but he's out too. So Justin and another friend who has not been named decide to make a run to get more. But Justin says that while he was leaving the party, he makes a wrong turn out of the driveway, and ends up about 30 minutes north of his intended destination where his car gets stuck. But he knows that Alonzo is stuck at this party without a ride home, so he connects with his friend Adam who was still at the party.

8:20He explains that he got stuck and asks him to give Alonzo a ride back to Gardner. Now in his interview with Unsolved Mysteries, Justin says that he can actually hear Alonzo in the background of this call basically making fun of him for getting stuck. So according to Justin, after he leaves, Alonzo is still at the party and fine. Unfortunately, we know less about Alonzo's night because unlike the other 99 or so people at that party, he's the only one who doesn't make it home. Hi, I'm here to pick up my son Milo. There's no Milo here. Who picked up my son from school? Streaming only on Peacock. I'm going to need the name of everyone that could have a connection.

9:05You don't understand. It was just the five of us. So this was all planned. What are you going to do? I will do whatever it takes to get my son back. I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people killing each other. All her fault. A new series streaming now, only on Peacock. On the morning of Sunday, April 4th, 2004, the landline rings in Alonzo's home. His mother, Maria Ramirez, answers. On the other line is one of Alonzo's friends asking if he's home. She says he should be and calls out for him, but there's no answer. She checks his room, which it looks like he had not been there, the bed is made.

9:44She checks the basement, but Alonzo's not home, and she already knows that something is off and is not happy about it. She gets back to the phone and tells this friend that he isn't here, and then asks, where is he? The friend suggests that maybe Alonzo spent the night at someone's house, but Maria knows that this just isn't something he usually did, and Daniel would later confirm that in an interview as well. Alonzo always came home. So Maria gets right to work. She tells this friend that they need to start calling around and figure out where her son is right now. And she does the same. Everyone really just starts calling each other at this point, asking what happened at that party.

10:25Where is Alonzo? Justin confirms that he was under the impression that Adam was going to give Alonzo a ride home. But after he connected with Adam, it turns out that for some unknown reason, that never happened. Adam left without Alonzo, and now no one knows where he is. In addition to the people local to Gardner, Maria calls Alonzo's friend Rodney English, who grew up with him back in Topeka. He didn't go to the party, but she figures that maybe Alonzo somehow ended up with him or contacted him. And like Maria, Rodney already knows that there is something really wrong here, and he's upset that his friends left him at this party in this super small town about an hour away from home.

11:06So Rodney makes the trip to Gardner, then gets with Alonzo's friends to go to Lucene to look for Alonzo. He ends up riding with Justin. This is the first time they'd ever met. Of course, they fear the worst at this point, but are hoping for the best. Maybe Alonzo just got drunk and fell asleep somewhere on the property after being stranded. They get to the party house and just start walking the property. At first, they come up with nothing. But as Rodney starts walking down the long gravel driveway, he sees something on the other side of the road. It's Alonzo's beanie and one of his boots, just out in the open.

11:44Then they find Alonzo's other boot near the creek on the property. Rodney says it looks like someone turned out of the driveway and threw Alonzo's hat and boot out one window, drove maybe a few hundred feet, and then threw the other boot out of the opposite window. But they don't really get a lot of time to scope out this area, because shortly after this, a man on a four-wheeler comes kind of out of nowhere and tells them that they need to leave right now. So they do. Again, Rodney's upset. He confronts Justin and asks how he could leave him at this party alone. He says that's not what friends do.

12:22And everyone's fears only got worse when they started hearing more about the party. It turns out that Alonzo was one of only three black people there. And a lot of people were talking about how Alonzo had gotten in an altercation and that people at this party were using slurs against him. The most prevalent of these rumors appears to be that Alonzo may have flirted with a white woman and that upset many of the white men at the party. After this, Maria Ramirez marches right down to the sheriff's office to file a missing persons report and they tell her that she has to wait 48 hours. But Maria is our hero in this story and she says absolutely not.

13:03I'm telling you and reporting it right now that he's missing. Now, I don't know if they actually filed a report at that time. It doesn't seem like it. But I'm glad that she pushed back. She knew something was wrong and wasn't going to listen to their assumptions that he was probably just walking around barefoot somewhere an hour away from home. The next day, Monday, April 5th, Alonzo's brother Billy and his wife Cindy make a trip to the party house to see what's going on for themselves. and they actually get in contact with the owner of the property, who says it was supposed to be empty, which I think does lead some credence to the idea that this party may have been out of spite for being evicted, but that's still unclear.

13:46Either way, Cindy peeks into the windows and she's pretty shocked to see that the house is basically empty. She says it did not look like a house that just had 100 drunk teenagers and 20-somethings partying in it less than 48 hours earlier. So Billy and Cindy go down to the sheriff's office too. They want to reiterate how serious this situation is. And Lang County Sheriff Marvin Stites says that he's sure Alonzo will turn up. He's probably just walking around out there somewhere. And I really do love this whole family because Cindy pushes back. She asks, who do you know that's out there walking around no shoes on, especially after it just rained?

14:27But the sheriff's office still really isn't taking it seriously, and their only choice is to hope that law enforcement comes around. And Lane County Sheriff's Office had Alonzo's case for about a day before the Kansas City Bureau of Investigation, or KBI, takes over, and the Sheriff's Office becomes the assisting agency. By the 7th, they do their first official search of the property. They bring in dogs and a helicopter, but nothing is found. However, Alonzo is making the local news Especially after an anti-crime group named Move Up tells reporters that they've gotten numerous reports that Alonzo was the target of several racially motivated threats at the party And like we've seen in many cases now there's kind of this media battle between the Lynn County Sheriff's Office and Move Up The Sheriff's Office says that there's no indication of foul play or that Alonzo was the victim of a hate crime but that they're not ruling it out either.

15:27While reps from Move Up keep talking about the information they're receiving to the contrary. By the 10th, the FBI joins the case, specifically because of the likelihood that this was a hate crime. Their main focus is conducting interviews. In total, they have 40 special agents working on Alonzo's case. 10 are stationed at a command post in Kansas City, and the other 30 are divided into pairs to conduct what they estimate to be at least 80 interviews with partygoers. On the 12th, another search team is back at the party house, this time with a special rescue team to search the creek. But again, nothing's found.

16:06Now, while all of this is happening, Alonzo's family keeps asking the sheriff's office if they can help in these searches, but they're continually told no. They need to stay away and leave it to law enforcement to search. At one point, they even ask Alonzo's family to stop calling, They say that they'll call them if they have any updates. So Alonzo's family respects their wishes and doesn't participate in any of these searches. Instead, they focus on raising awareness. They print and distribute flyers while wearing t-shirts with Alonzo's face on them. In total, law enforcement conducts six searches for Alonzo in the areas surrounding the party house, using what seemed like every resource they had, a variety of different dogs, aerial support, and officers did several shoulder-to-shoulder grid searches.

16:58They were certain that wherever Alonzo was, he was not on or around that property. So they go back to Alonzo's family and say, hey, we've done all we can with these searches. If you guys want to give it a try, you have our permission. So on Saturday, May 1st, 51 of Alonzo's friends, family members, and volunteers conduct their own search for Alonzo surrounding the party house. And in less than an hour, they find him. At about 2 p.m., a volunteer named Karen Turner was headed with her group to investigate a white shed on the property. But before they could get to it, she sees Alonzo's body on the bank of the creek.

17:38Like his boots and his hat just completely in the open and on top of some brush. She can't believe it. She radios it into the team, and Alonzo's brother Billy jumps down the bank to confirm that it is his brother. He then runs to the highway to flag down a sheriff's deputy for help. His death is immediately reported as a homicide by the Lynn County Sheriff's Office. I found multiple articles to confirm this. On Sunday, the Kansas City Star published an article that said, quote, the Lane County Sheriff's Department on Saturday determined the case was a homicide, end quote. But by Monday, Sheriff Stites told the media that this was simply a death investigation and they wouldn't have the results of Alonzo's autopsy for up to five weeks.

18:28When those results come back, Alonzo's cause and manner of death are determined to be inconclusive. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded so you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you like tea time you or this tea time you or even this tea time you said you hear about Dave or even tea time tea time tea time you so update on Dave it's up to you we'll take the laundry rinse it's time to be great This episode is brought to you by Cars.com. On Cars.com, you can shop over 2 million cars.

19:14That means over 2 million new car possibilities, like making space for your growing family, becoming the type of person who takes spontaneous weekend camping trips, or upgrading your commute. Wherever life takes you next, or whoever you're looking to be, there's a car for that on Cars.com. Visit Cars.com to discover your next possibility.

19:34It seems that forensic pathologist Eric K. Mitchell in Topeka didn't find anything that could tell him what happened to Alonzo. He says that there was no indication that Alonzo had been shot or stabbed. There were no broken bones or bone fractures, and no indication of sharp or blunt force trauma. He says it's possible Alonzo drowned, but there was no water found in his lungs. It's also possible he was strangled or something happened to his neck, but says that that tissue was so far decomposed and missing due to animal and insect activity that he couldn't be certain. He didn't know if Alonzo was beat or injured in any way before his death.

20:18He didn't know anything other than Alonzo was no longer with us. So, let's talk about what we do know. First, Lane County Sheriff Martin Stites says with absolute certainty that Alonzo was not there when law enforcement conducted their six searches. They searched that specific area several times. When asked how Alonzo might have gotten there, he says nature had to have taken its course. Many have pointed to the possibility of the water in the creek rising or falling and moving Alonzo to where he was found. I mean, sure, water moves. I can get on board with that. but what I can't get on board with is the idea that Alonzo was in that water for 27 days before he was found.

21:08While Dr. Mitchell says that Alonzo's body appeared consistent with one that may have been in the water for that length of time, his family says absolutely not. Billy Brooks, who saw his brother at the scene that day, says he just can't imagine that he was in the water for that long because it still looked like his brother to him. He didn't appear to be bloated or that badly decomposed. Like he was somehow, in some way, preserved and then moved to the scene. Now, it's hard to gauge that without pictures. But I believe Billy. Especially because Maria came to the table with some hard-to-dispute evidence.

21:48In Alonzo's episode of Unsolved Mysteries, she shows us what was found on Alonzo and supposedly exposed to or submerged in water for about a month. This is pretty shallow water, it's about 3 feet at its deepest, and apparently clear enough to see the bottom. So that's why I say exposed to or submerged, because we don't really know. But somehow, all the paper items in Alonzo's possession were in pristine condition. They didn't even look like they got wet. So these factors, along with the area just being searched so many times prior, makes people believe that Alonzo was moved to this area sometime after his death.

22:30That maybe whoever did this thought that they'd be in the clear since police stopped their searches, having no idea that Alonzo's family would be right behind them. Some theorize he was placed in a freezer until the perpetrator felt it was safe. Unfortunately, we and Alonzo's family just don't know. And really, nothing happens after this for a very long time. All of those interviews, finding Alonzo's body None of it led to an arrest in this case, or any movement at all Fifteen years later, in 2019, the KBI officially closed Alonzo's case, saying no crime occurred But it seems that either out of the kindness of their hearts, or, you know, fear of the impending Netflix Unsolved Mysteries reboot that was to feature his case in 2020, the FBI immediately reopened Alonzo's case.

23:28And this is really a brand new investigation. They exhume Alonzo's body and have it taken to the Dover Air Force Base, where an armed forces forensic examiner ruled his death to be a homicide. Just like what was reported 16 years earlier the day Alonzo was found. Now, they are withholding details about his autopsy out of the best interest of the investigation, but they do say that the forensic examiner found injuries inconsistent with normal patterns of decomposition. Acting U.S. Attorney Dustin Skinner said, quote, We knew that Alonzo Brooks died under very suspicious circumstances. This new examination by a team of the world's best forensic pathologists and experts establishes it was no accident.

24:17Alonzo Brooks was killed. We are doing everything we can, and will spare no resources to bring those responsible to justice. End quote. So I think this is a good time to talk about why this second autopsy was necessary. Because it turns out that Dr. Eric Mitchell doesn't have the best track record. In fact, Mitchell came to Kansas in 1994 after basically being forced to resign from his position as chief medical examiner in a county in New York. He was removing organs without consent from the families of the decedents. and improperly storing skeletons and body parts in his office. It was also revealed that a person who was convicted of creating child sex abuse material was somehow allowed access to a body in Mitchell's possession so that this man could take a selfie with it.

25:10This is in addition to Mitchell's employees being caught taking more selfies in with a woman who died by suicide. so instead of being fired, he resigns and continues his work in Kansas somehow. But this does follow him throughout his entire career. There have been many overturned convictions due to his actions. It was determined that he likely botched the timeline of a 1987 case that sent a likely innocent man named Hector Rivas to prison. He was awaiting a new trial before he died in custody in 2016. In a 2018 case, it was determined that while he reported that a child's school was likely crushed by a daycare worker sending her to prison, there was no evidence to suggest this.

25:58Honestly, there are a lot of cases like this. It seems like he just truly didn't know what he was doing, or have any respect for the dead. So he's awful, and that's why the FBI got a second opinion that correlated with what most people thought happened to Alonzo. And again, what the sheriff's office was telling the media happened. Alonzo was murdered. And about three weeks before the Unsolved Mystery episode airs, the FBI announces that a$100 ,000 reward is being offered in Alonzo's case for anyone who could lead them to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible. The FBI also confirms that they are looking into his death as being potentially racially motivated, and specifically cite that several witnesses say Alonzo was flirting with a white woman, and that caused drunken white men to want to fight him.

26:51They added that some of the racist partygoers also expressed resentment that Alonzo was at the party at all. So they get this all buttoned up before Unsolved Mysteries airs on July 1st, 2020, when most of the world hears about Alonzo's case for the first time. And of course, none of this makes it to the episode because it's too late. Why they didn't include that stuff about Dr. Mitchell, because that was not too late, I don't know. But basically, that episode ends with KBI closing the case. Of course, the massive benefit to this is it does majorly propel Alonzo into the public eye. And we start getting a lot of details that never made that Unsolved Mysteries episode.

27:32Like, what happened to Justin after the party? Well, of course, we have more conflicting details here. because according to Rodney English and Maria Ramirez, Justin has changed his story several times. Rodney says Justin never mentioned getting lost and believes that he may have said that his axle broke that night. So when he hears about the rest of Justin's night, he outright says that he's lying. Now, I will say that this is from an anonymous source from the Daily Mail, so take it with a huge grain of salt. But this person says that they know Justin and he's never changed his story since his first interview with police.

28:11According to this anonymous source, Justin was far from the party when something happened to Alonzo. He says that Justin was able to get his car unstuck after he crashed it into a ditch. He then proceeded to go to a gas station where he was caught on surveillance taking out$200. After this, he and his friend go to a strip club that they are eventually kicked out of. This article also discusses some of the conflicting stories about how Alonzo may have reacted if someone was using slurs against him. On Unsolved Mysteries, Daniel says that wouldn't have bothered Alonzo enough for it to ruin his good time at the party, while Justin says it absolutely would have upset him.