20/20 - Murder at The U: An Execution

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

In episode 2 of "Murder at The U," enter the chaos of The University of Miami, where players are shot, brawls break out, and parties don’t stop. It’s the kind of chaos that could get someone killed.  To catch new episodes early, follow “30 for 30 Podcasts” for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Deppra Roberts here with another episode of Murder at the You from our colleagues at ESPN and 30430 podcasts. Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow 30 for 30 podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the next episode of Murder at the You. Previously on Murder at the You. I just remember the feeling of this kid is so happy with his life. He knows that the best is yet to come. Brian Patta, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down yesterday at the age of 22.

For the weeks and months after the shooting, police really tight-lipped. Tight-lipped, not telling you much? Not telling you, not telling you this goddamn day. Tight-lipped. How ultimately do you guys think this case is going to get solved? By somebody coming forward and having first-hand knowledge of whoever the perpetrator?

to me. November 7th, 2006, was a midterm election night in Miami. Well,er, thank you very much, and we have much more coming up on South Florida tonight. We'll have a live report from Washington with the latest information on the key U.S. House and Senate races. At the state attorney's office, prosecutor Herbert Irving Walker III was finishing up his day when his pager started to beep. You know, the call was like, hey, you got this homicide scene you need to go to on more complicated cases and high-profile cases, the prosecution will work alongside law enforcement, which is what we did in this case. So instead of heading home, Walker drove 14 miles south from the prosecutor's office downtown to the crime scene. He pulled into the parking lot of a complex called the

colony apartments. Already, a crowd of onlookers had gathered. It was a pretty wild scene because they had television cameras already there. So when I pulled up, you know, the area was roped off. and police cars everywhere, lights flashing. And so I had to, you know, pull my little corvette under the police tape. Walker got out of his car. Officers and crime scene texts from the Miami Day Police Department buzzed around him. You know, looking for fingerprints, photographing the scene, preserving evidence,

trying to rope off the area to make sure that the scene isn't contaminated. And then I was escorted by one of the uniformed officers to the location of the crime scene, where the body was laying on the sidewalk outside the apartments. And he was found face down so that it would appear that he may never have even seen the person coming. Like most everybody in Miami, Walker was a fan of the Miami Hurricanes. So when the detective on the case told him who the victim was, Walker recognized the name immediately, Brian Pata. That led him to some conclusions about what might have happened.

Now, Brian was a defensive lineman, so he's a big strong guy, so he would be able to handle himself physically with any guy and maybe any couple of guys. But we didn't have a sign of a struggle. He didn't have clothes torn. He didn't have the shrubbery near the sidewalk disturbed. So it seemed based upon the scene that we observed that the person approached him from behind and basically put him down. Walker and the police worked the crime scene carefully. They stayed there all night. Typically going out to a crime scene on homicide duty, you're there,

you look at the scene, you prove a search warrant, you might be there for an hour and a half, two hours, and you're gone. I was there for like 12 or 13 hours until the sunrise, and we were trying to uncover every stone. One reason law enforcement was being so careful in Brian's case, they knew they were being watched. Authorities aren't saying much about this murder investigation. and if they're searching for any suspects.

If they have a suspect in mind or an idea of a motive, they are not saying. When the media is there and the lights and the cameras, people tend to, you know, put on their best face and put forth the best effort. You know, like I said, I've done a number of high-profile cases. I've done cases on court television and things of that nature. But this with a young up-and-coming football player, that's just, you know, that's explosive. All through the night, the police canvassed the colony apartments, knocking on every door. But they turned up no eyewitnesses. There was no security camera footage.

There was no obvious trace of the killer other than the bullet that had pierced Brian's skull. How did this NFL-bound player on one of college football's biggest teams end up dead that night in Miami? Starting in 2017, more than a decade after the murder, we began digging into Brian's life to try to find an answer to that question. What we found was a team that was on edge even before one of its players was killed. I'm Paula Levine. From 30 for 30 Podcasts, this is Murder at the U, Episode 2, an Execution. Whenever I began reporting on a crime, I start by looking at the immediate context. There are often clues in the backstory.

And in this case, the major storyline at Miami, before Brian's murder, was about the team's low morale. It turns out, Brian's death came in the middle of a precarious time for the U. Coach Larry Coker says he will discourage his players against owning guns after a shooting incident involving two of his players last week. One morning that summer, before the 2006 season even got started, a different University of Miami football player was shot outside his home. Reserve Safety Willie Cooper was shot and slightly wounded outside his off-campus apartment by a gunman hiding in the bushes. He was very fortunate because one of his teammates, another scholar athlete, hurricane player Brandon Meriwether, happened to be packing. And he returned fire with his semi-automatic. No one was killed and Willie wasn't seriously injured.

Police determined that it had been an attempted robbery and that Brandon Merriweather was justified in returning fire. But the details of that morning were quickly overshadowed. The Miami police said it was a lawful shooting. And Coach Coker will be talking about the incident when his players began practice for the fall football season. Overshadowed by the fact that players seem to be walking around with loaded guns. The reaction from the press was judgmental.

One local columnist wrote, Remember, when saying a team was loaded, meant talent? This looked bad for head coach Larry Coker. So he decided to institute a new rule, no guns. But there was one problem. It was a pretty difficult rule to enforce, as producer Dan Arruda discovered. What can you tell me, if anything, about the gun culture,

with the team. Oh, everybody had them. Dan, who did you talk to to find out about how that ban was received and why the Hurricanes players were carrying guns in the first place? Believe it or not, the person who gave us the most honest assessment of that team's no-gun culture was Steve Caldwell, who was one of the team chaplains. Caldwell grew up in Chicago and came to Miami on a baseball scholarship in the 80s. still very much carried himself as an athlete when I met him.

He was a younger guy and he also carried guns. We carried him from protection because you just never know when you're needed. What percent of those guys do you think on an everyday occasion we're walking around and strapped? Oh man, well we have 88 players on the team? About a third. So did the players back that up?

I mean, of the ones you talked to, did any of them explain? why they carried. I think Tavares Gooden, who was a former linebacker and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, which is about 30 minutes north of Miami. He summed it up the best. We're like Batman. The reason why we have weapons is because the bad guys have weapons.

You know what I'm saying? We had them because everybody else had them and we lived in a scary time, we lived in a scary place. So what did you find out about Brian and guns? So I'd heard from several sources that Brian owned guns. It was part of the culture. It seemed like everyone.

had them. I was told that he liked going at the shooting range every once in a while. It was just a way for him to let off some steam. Eventually, I talked to Mani Navarro, who was covering the team and was doing this story on Brian so they could shoot this version of cribs. And on their way to Brian's apartment, Brian mentioned to Mani that he needed to hide his guns. I got to hide my guns, man. You're guns too, man. I like guns too, man. You got license for him, right? I got a license. I got a gun, right? Yeah, man, that's straight, then you know what? Brian was giving Manny a tour of the house, and during the tour, Mani mentioned seeing an AK-47 in one of Brian's closets.

But it wasn't until we got the actual police report that detailed what police found the night of the murder, that Brian had a shotgun and an AK-47 in a closet, and he had a handgun on his night table. These are not just your weekend, go-to-the-range kind of gun collection. These are serious heavy-duty guns. Okay, but there were some things that you got from other interviews that may have given you an indication that there were other reasons he might have been armed like that.

According to Brian's siblings, he had been confiding in them about not sleeping well, something chasing him in his nightmares, fighting things in his sleep. He told Edric once that his girlfriend Jada found him sleeping in the closet, and that's where he kept his guns. What was Manny's reaction to seeing Brian's guns? I think he was shocked to have found an AK-47 in Brian's closet. That's not a gun that you come across very often. It also showed Manny that head coach Larry Coker was no longer being listened to by his own team.

There's supposed to be a no-gun tolerance on this team. And I remember seeing the AK-47 rifle that Brian had in the closet and saying to myself, this is it. This shows you here that they do not care what Larry says. Brian's guns proved that Larry Coker could make all the rules he wanted, but Brian and the other players would not give up their guns. And under Florida law, they didn't have to. It was one of many losing battles that Coach Coker would face that year.

Another was the team's performance on the field. He'd run up a great record in his first three years as head coach, 35 wins, a national championship, only three. three losses. Miami went nine and three in the 2004 and 2005 seasons, and that's okay for most college football programs, but not Miami. There was chatter that Coker might not last much longer if he couldn't turn things around. Then, as the 2006 season got going, the hurricanes lost two out of their first three games. Everything was fucked up, man. Randy Phillips, who played defensive back, remembered how the team's vibe changed early in the season. When you lose,

and shit ain't going good. Everybody going to be stepping on each other's toes. Like, everybody is tight walking around, so everybody on edge. Out of the backfield, James Bryant into the end zone for a touchdown. On October 14, 2006, the University of Miami was playing a home game against another suffering Miami team, the winless Florida International Panthers. Then, in the third quarter... John Petty's extra point is up and good.

and another melee on the field. A huge fight broke out. Players wrestled each other to the ground, punching, kicking, and stomping, while the crowd cheered wildly. This one is getting out of hand. Flags all over the place. And this is ugly.

Very ugly. For Hurricanes fans, this brawl with FIU was a show of force. Former University of Miami player Lamar Thomas was calling the game for a regional broadest. That's what I'm talking about. You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked. You don't come in the OB playing that stuff. You're across the ocean over there.

You're across the city. You can't come over to our place talking noise like that. You get your butt beat. Documentarian and Hurricanes superfan, Billy Corbyn, was also watching that night. I thought it was great. Certainly Lamar Thomas thought it was great. I think from inside Miami, people were excited to see that swagger back because I think that people were bummed that the team didn't seem to be playing with the fire that it used to have. Everywhere else, it was a real symbol of how far this team had fallen.

The problem from me is this notion of the word swagger, which you hear at the you more than other places. And what swagger connotes to some people is something akin to violence. Oh, UM is back to its, quote, thug days, end quote. It's a thug thinking, it's a street mentality, it's a gang mentality. That was like a gang fight. It really did say all the things about the program that we didn't want to be said at the time. They've been spending 25 years at Miami trying to clean things up and they've had some success. But right now they have hit rock bottom at Miami.

Helmets swinging. Lamar Thomas up in the booth cheering on his guys. You know, players kicking their feet at. people. That was absolutely hideous. You know what? It might not be fair, but for all of those who are saying that Larry Coker doesn't have control at Miami, this is fuel for their fire, even if it's not fair. Combined, the two teams had 31 players suspended for taking part in the brawl. Brian wasn't one of them, but he was part of the fight. In a video from the game, you can see Brian kicking another player's head. After Brian was killed, some players wondered whether his death might have been payback for that fight.

People kill you by anything. Yeah, people get pissed enough from a fight that they'll come back and kill you. Four years removed from being one of the best teams in college football, there was a sense that the U was in free fall.

But according to former Miami Herald reporter Mani Navarro, the team's defense was still a bright spot. The only success that they had was defensively. And Brian was still a part of very, very good defense. When you look at this Miami defense, and you know there are number seven in defense in the NCAA.

They get to the ball in a hurry. This was a really strong season for Brian. He was a senior, months away from finishing school, and on track for the draft, which is why it was so surprising when his brother Edrick said Brian wasn't happy at the U. I got two more games left, man. I hate this school. I want to get out of this school. those words he said

I want to get out that school I don't like that school Before the season started Brian had gotten some news that turned his senior year upside down Throughout his first three years With the Hurricanes Brian was a defensive end

It's the glamour position of the defensive line The guys who rushed the quarterback Pile up the sacks He'd been doing it since high school And was good at it This was also the position He hoped to play in the NFL

But going to be into his senior season, the team's coaching staff told Brian they were changing his position to defensive tackle. Clint Hurt is a defensive line coach in the NFL. At the time, he was in his first year as Miami's defensive line coach. Hurt was young. He'd graduated from UM just a few years earlier. He remembers calling Brian into his office to tell him the news.

And I said, this is something that you need to do. To the untrained eye, this might not seem like a big change. all Brian was doing was moving a foot or two closer to the inside of the defensive line. But this was devastating news to Brian. He'd need to retrain, learn a whole new position, just as he was getting ready to go to the NFL. Sitting in his office that morning, Coach Hurt tried to explain how this move was going to help the team. Brian's close friend, Dwayne Hendricks, said Brian worried that changing positions would tank his NFL dreams. So he looked at it as a, I was trying to stop his money from coming in and taking care of his family and what he wanted to do, his goals, in essence.

It was ticked off. Brian stormed out of Coach Hertz's office. A bit later, Hurt texted him to come back so they could have lunch together. Draft analyst Todd McShay remembers Brian's NFL prospects rising after the position change. I remember thinking in my mind at the time and writing it. that he had gone from a fifth, sixth, seventh round or somewhere in that late range, or what today would be called a day two pick, which is a massive difference. A hit from behind and catching his own fumble.

Brian Patton, knocks down Brian Brown. Mani Navarro, the Miami Herald writer, had watched Brian play since he was a star at Central High. He'd followed Brian's career on the Hurricanes, and he had a sense of what might be coming next. after his senior year. Your best guess, what would have happened to Brian if he had finished that season out? He would have been a second or third round pick. I thought he had the NFL body

and the personality to play the position for a long time. And I think he'd be on TV once he retired. It's not hard to imagine Brian being on TV after his playing days ended. He was funny, charming, and he had that infectious smile. You'd hear about Brian

Pada, being involved in his community, you'd hear about Brian Pada, being more than a football player. But all of that promise was about to be cut short. Good morning, happy election day to you, 77 degrees at 6.45, and some breaks of sunshine. On the morning of November 7th, Brian Pada got up early to go to workouts with the team. After workouts, he caught up with his teammate and friend, Eric Moncourt. I heard Brian call me, I turned around, he said, what you're about to do? I was like, man, I'm about to register for my classes.

He was like, well, me too. Let's go. Eric hopped in Brian's SUV and they headed over to the registrar's office. You know, we made the lady laugh in there. We was in there talking to her for a couple of minutes. Then they got something to eat and killed time for a few hours before class. I walked in class and I walked right. back out and he did the same thing at his class. So we started, we was like, all right, man, let's just go to the locker room, you know, just hang out and wait for practice.

It was Coach Hertz's 28th birthday that day. True to form, Brian planned to prank him after their practice was over. He was like, hey, you know it's Coach Hurd birthday. I was like, oh yeah, okay, okay. He was like, yeah, let's get him. Let's get him. Here's Coach Hurt. And I remember up to break the huddle. And, you know, obviously practice was going to be over with and I caught his eye. And I was like, oh, he's up to something. I kind of get on me.

Your birthday coach, whatever. And then Brian, pretty ice water. Dumped that damn thing was so cold. Practice ended that day at 515. In the locker room, Brian took some time to hit up one of his freshman teammates, Josh Holmes. When I went into the shower, he was in there. And this normal shower, you know, just shooting. the shit a little bit, whatnot, or just talking. But then after when we came out, you really

started talking to me just about being a good person, being like a good man, and making good choices in life, and, you know, not to be caught up in all this silly stuff that college is going to bring. It was like if my older brother was, like, talking to me about something and trying to teach me a lesson or just rub some knowledge on me. After showering, the team got together for their weekly meal. They ordered from Eat at Bezies, a local pizza and barbecue place. Teammate John Beeson remembers that dinner. It was all of us sitting around,

the locker room or whatnot, just grubbing, talking about whatever, laughing. And, you know, the last thing I remember when I saw him, we were all laughing about how we couldn't mess with Coach Hurts. So the biggest smile on his face, happy. Like, there was nothing that you would say that Brian was disturbed or different. He was, you know, the usual. Brian Paddle.

Brian left the HECD Athletic Center after that meal around 6.20 p.m. He got back into his Black Infinity SUV and started heading home. As he was leaving the facility, he saw a few freshman teammates waiting at a bus stop. Josh Holmes was one of them.

And he pulls up and, you know, he laughs. He's like to let me guess you guys on a ride. And I was like, yeah, man, if you offer and we would take it. So he's out, yeah, hop and I got y'all. And, you know, we just hop in the car. It was just what college athletes talk about. You know, we're talking about music bumping in there,

talking about practice, talking about, you know, the day of the life on campus. And, you know, I remember him dropping us off. And, you know, we're all, you know, giving each other a dab getting out the car. And, you know, I just remember him saying, all, y'all, y'all, boys, take it easy. We'll see you tomorrow. The freshman dorm was in the opposite direction from Brian's apartment. So after dropping them off, he turned around.

His drive took him back past the university's athletic fields, and through the ritzie residential streets of Coral Gables. Then he got on US One, a six-lane artery that would have been jammed with traffic at that hour. He called his brother Fednoll on the way home. And I said, okay, I'm going to see you Saturday. He was home. See, I made it.

I'm going to talk to you later. I usually sign off was like, yeah, and click off. Sometime after Brian hung up with Fednoll, he pulled into the dark, unlit parking lot of the colony. but he never made it up the stairs to his apartment. In the years after Brian's murder, detectives with the Miami-Dade Police Department assembled a report on their investigation

with summaries of the hundreds of interviews they conducted. It would take us several years of trying to get this report, but when we finally did, we read about what happened that night from two points of view. One perspective came from Brian's girlfriend, Jada Brody. Jada lived with Brian and his teammate Dwayne Hendricks. According to what she told detectives, Jada was in the apartment cleaning out her dog's kennel. She told police that she heard Brian talking to someone outside and went to see what was going on.

She saw Brian lying on the ground. At first she thought he was playing a prank. Then she saw blood around his head. Jada said she ran back upstairs to call 911. The second perspective came from Brian's close friend and roommate Dwayne Hendricks. He had left the HECC center at the same time Brian did. But Dwayne stopped for gas on the way, so he pulled into the parking lot just a few minutes after Brian. He played so much, I thought he was just joking.

I was like, all right, man. I remember saying, all right, it ain't funny, why you laid on the ground for? And I was like, I was like, you know. or something like that. And as I walked over, bloodbine is an diagnosis. Like at that point, I literally hit falling anyone. I think either my wife's broadcast of that at. The 911 call.

Yeah, the 911 call. Dwayne saw Jada come down the stairs, talking on the phone with the dispatcher. But the call dropped, so Dwayne dialed 911 from his cell. You can hear Jada's voice in the background of his call. You can have a day. Can I ridiculous. Yeah? Hello.

Hello. Hello. What address? 9315, 5.4 17th Avenue. What happened there? Somebody got shot. The guy's on the ground. I don't know where he's bleeding from, but he's on the ground, ma'am.

Okay. And if you just stay with me and did you see what happened? No, I did not see what happened. Nobody see what happened, miss. You don't know where he shot? After hanging up with 911, I called his mom. Dwayne continued calling everyone who could think of who knew Brian. of who knew Brian, family, teammates, and coaches,

including Coach Hurt, who was on his way home to celebrate his birthday. Brian's teammates started arriving soon after the police. Eric Moncourt had been on his way to a study group in the library when he got a call from a friend whose dad was a cop. As soon as he heard the news, Eric and another friend raced over to Brian's apartment.

We hop out of the car and we'll walk in towards where we see the police lights and stuff like that, and then they got the yellow tape. And as we were walking up, I saw the tarp covering his body. I just lost it. Lost it. Brian's mom, Jeanette, called her daughter, Ronette,

who was busy giving her twins a bath. The phone just kept ringing, ringing, ringing. So I put the water and I got the phone, and I said, hello. And it was my mom. And she's crying hysterically saying, You're not here? Brian is dead? I just paused and dropped the phone

and started screaming. And my daughter started screaming because they didn't know what was going on. They were only two years old. And if I could tell you, I just went, no. Like, I felt like the world had just, like, everything stopped. By the time Brian's sister Nellie arrived,

the police had taped off the scene to keep the crowd out. Oh, man, when I got there, it was, oh, I just, I don't know how those people got there before us, but it was a lot of people, like, a lot of people out there, a big commotion, and I was confused, and I wanted to see my brother and kind of look, and I just saw, like, the yellow thing on, but they didn't want me to go back there.

Ronette arrived with their mom, Jeanette. I remember her jumping out of the car, running to the crime scene. She's screaming. And I just stood there and just tears. I remember it so clearly. I'm like, my brother's really gone. My brother's gone.

The news crews were already. there. One of them caught Jeanette on camera. Give me my son. My son, very good son, never have a problem with nobody, you know. Oh God, it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. When prosecutor Herbert Walker arrived on the scene, the police were already operating under the glare of TV cameras. He didn't want any slip-ups that might jeopardize the case. So even before the police searched Brian's house and car, Walker wanted to get a search warrant. Just to air on the side of caution, I had suggested to the lead detective

that before we start, you know, searching the house and searching a car and uncovering all this stuff that might wind up being useful in a criminal prosecution. Walker and the police went into search Brian's things carefully in case there was any evidence that might lead them to the killer. But the most important evidence on the scene that night was Brian's body. Walker remembers looking at the body with the medical examiner, Dr. Emma Lou. They could see that Brian had been shot in the side of the head. So it appeared based upon the nature of the womb that this was a close fire, a close range fire shot that killed him rather than one far away, which then again kind of gives you a clue. Did the guy sneak up on him?

And that's kind of the way it looked like. If the killer planned to ambush Brian, that might. meant he or she probably knew about his practice schedule and when to expect him. That was the final conclusion that we had drawn that the guy knew enough about his schedule to know that you have been football practices in the fall, we'll get out at this time, and it appeared that he may have been waiting for him. Of course, what wasn't clear was why this happened. Walker and the detective scoured the crime scene for any evidence of motive.

If it was a robbery, then they would have taken the watch. He had a bunch of money. They would have taken that. And none of those things were disturbed. According to the medical examiner's report, police found nine $100 bills in Brian's wallet. It seemed more along the lines of some kind of, you know, like a gangland style assassination, if you will.

And so that was another angle that we kind of wanted to look at, is there a gang involvement here? Is somebody in a gang trying to make a name for themselves by targeting a celebrity. That was just one of the theories police began considering that night as they continued to look for clues, like a bullet casing. And so you would expect to find per shot a case, but we didn't find any cases.

And I remember us looking. I remember looking myself, you know, standing there with a detection of flashlights looking around near the car and near the sidewalk. It could be that one, the casing is so small and innocuous that it just didn't get found. Or the shooter police stopped the case. There you go. That's the next thing.

If this is an assassination where you have a premeditated plan to kill and you're going to sneak up behind the person very carefully, it would be very easy. Once you fire one round to hear where the case hits because it's ejected out, it was presumed that's probably a 9mm, and the guy probably grabbed the case,

which means this might be some type of a hit. and there's more to this than meets the eye. Who could have wanted a rising football star with a promising future, dead? Detectives began asking questions that night, asking Brian's family and teammates if he had any enemies, if he'd been in any fights, if he was worried for his safety. Turns out, the answer to all of those questions was yes. As we investigated Brian's murder,

11 years later, one thing started to become clear. Any one of those enemies could have wanted Brian dead. And any one of them might have been on the other end of a heated phone call he'd had the day he died. An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody. And what he was saying was, well, come and get it then. Come and get it then. You know where you could find me? So he was upset.

That's next time on Murder at the U. Murder at the U is based on reporting by me, Paula Levine, and Dan Aruta, with support from Scott Frankel, Elizabeth Merrill, and ESPN's investigative unit. Our senior producer is Matt Frasica. Our senior editorial producer is Preeti Varathan. Our associate producers are Megan Coyle and Gus Navarro, story editing by Adiza Egan. Additional editing by Ben Weber and Mike Drago. Our archival producer is Matthew Fisher.

Our line producer is Kath Sankey. Production managers are Jason Schwartz and Sheena Williams. Fact-checking by David Sabino. Original music and sound design by Ryan Ross Smith. Chris Buckle is vice president of ESPN investigative, Enterprise, and Digital Journalism. Marcia Cook, Brian Lockhart, Heather Anderson, and Burke Magnus are executive producers for 30 for 30.