College Football Live - BONUS EPISODE: Murder at The U

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Introducing the latest investigative series from ESPN and 30 for 30 Podcasts, “Murder at The U.” A college football star on the brink of NFL greatness is brazenly executed steps from campus. The ...case almost goes cold until a team of ESPN reporters start digging… and find a side of the victim he didn’t want people to know. 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm Preeti Varathan, and I run 30 for 30 podcasts. You're about to listen to season 16 of our show, Murder at the U. This season, we're doing something a little different. We're following a story that's been unfolding for 20 years, but is coming to an end right now. Because in Miami, one of the city's most anticipated murder trials is finally happening. And it centers two college football players from one of the most legendary and notorious schools, the University of Miami.
Starting point is 00:00:28 One of them is dead. One is on trial for killing him. This season, we tell the story of how a case that left a team divided that seemed unsolvable for years finally made its way to trial, and why a team of ESPN reporters refused to let it go. Today, we're bringing you episodes one and two of this series. And we'll be back every Tuesday and Thursday with new episodes while this trial is happening in real time. So stay tuned and thank you for listening. It's 2006. Two guys in their 20s are driving down US 1 in Miami in a black infinity SUV. The AC's blasting, the music is blasting.
Starting point is 00:01:18 Who the fuck you think you're fucking with? I'm the fucking boss. Tell them 45, white on white, that's fucking Ross. Yeah, we're on our way to my crib. driving to that Rick Ross, you know, U.S.S. 1 going south. So, you know, you know, there's a ride it. The driver is a football player at the University of Miami, Brian Padda. The guy next to him in the passenger seat is a sports writer from the Miami Herald.
Starting point is 00:01:50 His name is Mani Navarro. Mani has his camera trained on Brian. I was a young reporter who wanted to do something cool. MTV Cribs was sort of big back then. MTV Cribs was a show where celebrities led camera crews through tours of their houses. Mani wanted to make something similar for the Miami Herald. But in Manny's version, the celebrities would be University of Miami football players. The Hurricanes.
Starting point is 00:02:21 So my idea was just make these guys personable. Tell a story that is unique in Miami. These are Miami guys playing for Miami football program. Brian was really the first guy I threw the idea across. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm down. I'm down, let's do it, let's do it. And, you know, I got the camera on them because I want to make sure I get the audio end of it, you know, the whole thing.
Starting point is 00:02:54 The two guys head to Brian's apartment complex. It's called The Colony, where several other University of Miami players live. It's classic Florida, with corridors on the outside of the building, like a motel. We get to his apartment, he's like runs in there. He starts picking stuff up, moving stuff around. He's like, don't record yet. And he says, how do you want me to, where do you want to start? I said, well, why don't you open the door?
Starting point is 00:03:17 This is what they do in MTV Cribs, right? They open the door. They welcome you in. What up, y'all? My crib, I'm Brian and Patta. University of Miami, Davis the Tiger. If you walk in, it's a townhouse, you know, it's a townhouse, two-bedroom, two and a high bathroom.
Starting point is 00:03:32 You know, he's kind of like giving me the tour, opening cabinets up and showing me stuff. This is my cabinet right here. I love pudding. He was just, he was so happy to kind of be the star of the show. You know, I think in his mind, I think he started to think, like, yeah, it's only the Miami Herald right now, but I could do this for MTV. Like, this is like a nice little practice run, you know. Here's my family during the Florida State game.
Starting point is 00:03:58 My two sister, my cousin. This is my mom right here, and this is my girlfriend, Jada. I just remember the feeling of this kid is so happy with his. life. He knows that the best is yet to come. Like, this is good. Life is good. I got a girlfriend. I got a dog. Other than that, this is me, Brian Padder. All right. Thanks a lot. All right. But it was sort of this feeling of things are going to get better. It seems that way, listening to the recording, hearing Brian's enthusiasm, his giddiness,
Starting point is 00:04:37 except for one thing. A few weeks later, Brian Pada would be dead. We do have a breaking story. A University of Miami football player has been shot and killed. Amarosaun's live in Klingled with the very latest. Michael Jackie, Miami Day police confirming tonight, Brian Pada, UM's defensive lineman was shot and killed tonight. We are told his body was failing.
Starting point is 00:05:03 From the outside looking in, it was the kind of case that police should have been motivated to solve quickly. A star player on a major college football team murdered near campus, just a few months shy of the NFL draft. But that is not what happened. Instead, weeks turned into months, which eventually turned into years, and Brian's murder remained unsolved. But almost 20 years later, someone is finally set to stand trial for the murder of Brian Padda.
Starting point is 00:05:39 I'm Paula Levine. From 30 for 30 Podcast, this is Murder at the U. The story of how two University of Miami teammates found themselves on opposite ends of a murder investigation. And what happened when a team of ESPN reporters brought that investigation into the light. Episode 1. Chilling with the Cains. Every March, are brackets the only thing you can think about? Do you have symptoms such as constant bracket obsession? or moderate to severe bracket-related distractions.
Starting point is 00:06:19 You may be living with bracket brain. Thankfully, there's ESPN Tournament Challenge, the number one proven way to treat bracket brain right at the source. So this March, download the ESPN Tournament Challenge app, fill out your men's bracket, and get you and your brain in the game. ESPN Tournament Challenge play the number one bracket game, presented by Allstate. 9-1-1, where is the emergency? It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore.
Starting point is 00:06:46 Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows. Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie, plays out in real life. I'm Jiu Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcast. As a reporter, I try to stay out of the story, but sometimes the work you do to get the story and what you uncover changes it.
Starting point is 00:07:28 That's exactly what happened here. And that story starts in 2017, in the office of Ben Weber. I was a feature producer at ESPN. One of the shows Ben worked on at the time was College Game Day, ESPN's weekly show about college football. Glad to have you with us. How great is it to have college. In August 2017, Ben received an email from an odd source. I got an email that said the Miami Police Department was interested in helping us tell this story in an effort to try to find new leads. The story was more than 10 years old, and it was about the unsolved murder of a University of Miami football player, Brian Pada.
Starting point is 00:08:14 Is it unusual for police departments to pitch stories? to ESPN. I'll say in my 25 years here, that's the first and only time that that has happened. But Ben looked up the case, and as he was scrolling through the results, he found a video of a press conference about this murder. It had happened only three months earlier. It started a pretty regular press conference. Ben would be the first of us to watch this press conference, but we'd all come back to it
Starting point is 00:08:47 over and over again. In many ways, it was the reason. we all got pulled into this case. The press conference was at the Miami-Dade Police headquarters in a nondescript fluorescent lit room. Detectives in ties and police officers wearing tan uniforms stood in rows. In front of them, at a table, said a family,
Starting point is 00:09:10 Brian Pada's family. Any reporter wants to start? Ms. Pada, your first name is... J-E-A-N-E-T-T-E-E-E. Yes. Brian's mom, Jeanette Pada, wore a colorful striped blouse. In her hands, she gripped a magazine with Brian, her youngest son, on the cover. The photo showed a young man with locks squinting in the Miami Sun.
Starting point is 00:09:37 He wore a bright white Miami Hurricanes football uniform with a number 95 on the shoulder. It's been 10 and a half years. How much easier is it for you to cope 10 and a half This is not easy for me because 10 years and a half, we never find here, we don't hear nothing. You know, we waited so long to find the answer, who killed my son. Nobody know how I feel in. Jeanette was answering a question, and then I think she just was overcome with emotion and thought about 10 and a half years. years have gone by when we still don't have answers.
Starting point is 00:10:25 My heart, you know, I cry, crying, and cry don't help. But sometimes before I go to bed or whatever, I have to pray. I say, God, I'm in your hand. One day you're going to find me the answer for my son. And then the tone and tenor shifted pretty quickly. I don't take even the work in the case anymore. Look like the case is closed. Nothing.
Starting point is 00:10:56 The room went silent. Jeanette Pada had just accused the Miami-Dade police of ignoring her son's case. She insinuated that the Miami PD had done nothing, and it became a little bit more accusatory and ramped up the uncomfortable nature of that press conference. I don't know what the police officers expected to get. get from that press conference. But I can almost guarantee that it wasn't this. Next, a reporter addressed the lead detective in the case, Miguel Dominguez.
Starting point is 00:11:31 And within the 10 years, have there been any leads? Yes. Yes. We've followed a multitude of leads. Obviously, we don't have anything solid enough to make an arrest at this time. Dominguez stood directly behind the family. His head was shaved clean, and he had a long, horseshoe mustache.
Starting point is 00:11:50 So what are you asking from the public? We believe that there's somebody out there with first-hand knowledge. This and whoever's responsible for this, we believe that either somebody close to them or a friend or family member, somebody has to know who was involved in this. And we're hoping that we get a phone call. Is it fair to say that after that press conference, after that plea, that Dominguez did get the phone call with the new evidence or the new witness or new information that he was waiting for. Yeah, I think that's really fair, and I think that's what led them to reach out to us at ESPN.
Starting point is 00:12:31 Like Ben said, this was an unusual pitch for college game day. But he was intrigued. So he set up a call with the detectives on the case to find out more. So the case is still open on your end, right? Right, correct. It's still in an open status. And we're still working on. So what's going on right now on your end to advance it? Is there anything or is it kind of in a law? But as far as any fresh new leads that came in, no. No, nothing, you know, we're kind of at a standstill. So this is a hypothetical.
Starting point is 00:13:03 So you don't, you know, if you can't answer it, that's fine. But 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 is. Or the guy, you know, told somebody what he did. We believe there's somebody out there that knows. Here's what Ben knew. The case had gone unsolved for more than a decade.
Starting point is 00:13:34 And at the same time, Miami-Dade Police were convinced that someone, somewhere, knew something. So in September and October, really started to dig in and do a lot more research on Brian on the murder, and then went down towards the end of 2017. So I was making a quick trip down to Miami and started to do initial interviews
Starting point is 00:13:57 and then realized this could turn into something big. So he began to build a team. We have a feature producer that lives in Miami. Let me see if he has a willingness to help out or be involved in this project. My name's Dan Aruta. I'm a feature producer with ESPN, and I've been living in South Florida since 2015.
Starting point is 00:14:19 When you got the call about working on this project, what did you remember of Brian's story? I clearly remember it being a national sports story, and it led Sports Center for several days. Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down yesterday at the age of 22. So take me back to that at the beginning. How did you start off with this and you get this call? What do you do next? I literally just began to pile up interview after interview and just try to gain a story. stronger kind of understanding of who Brian was and how big, for lack of a better word, his life was and how complicated and layered it was.
Starting point is 00:14:57 Brian was the youngest of nine siblings. In the spring of 2018, I interviewed several family members, including Brian's mother, Jeanette, and his twin older brothers, Edric and Edwin. They were the closest in age to Brian, only two years older. We would walk to school together. We would play football together. We would do everything together. Tell me about Edwin and Edric.
Starting point is 00:15:19 I think the first thing you notice about Edwin and Edric is their size. These are two guys who played collegiate football, and they carry a certain swagger and confidence with them. I think the second thing you'll notice is just how kind they are. Here I am. I'm coming into their lives, asking about the worst memory of their life. There's every chance to be guarded and wary about sharing their thoughts with me. But they were as open as honest as anyone could have hoped for. So for the weeks and months after the shooting, police really tight-lipped. Lipp not telling you much.
Starting point is 00:15:50 Not talking about until this goddamn day. Tight-lipped. At what point do you and the family start getting frustrated with the lack of progress? Three years later on the road, giving us false hope. What do you mean by false hope? Pumping us up. We got it. We're going to make everything we can't.
Starting point is 00:16:07 We're going to do it. And we know who did it. And it was, you know, too boosts you. I think that's just a freaking method that they use to kind of, you know, console the family, you know, kind of. get them home, still have hope. They used that for many years until it got silent. So we started calling the offices. We're in answering.
Starting point is 00:16:30 So many different damn detectives were assigned to the case. It was just, now who was this, Sergeant? Now, God damn, who was this? Now, who was this? Oh, we don't, no, such and such as a sign to that case. I'm like, wow, what the hell is going on? Confusion. What do you remember about meeting Brian Paz's,
Starting point is 00:16:49 We met for the first time in 2018. Jeanette was in her 60s at the time and spoke with a thick Haitian accent. She was incredibly warm and kind. What was Brian like when he was a little boy? Ryan was funny boy and like to laugh and make a joke. You make people, you know, happy. Even you sad, he tried to make you happy. Anytime he comes into the house,
Starting point is 00:17:19 See me laying on in the bed. Mommy, move. Move, Mommy. Can that guy place to sleep, please? I say, go sleep in the couch. No, Mommy. I want to sleep with you. Eventually, our conversation shifted over to the investigation, Miami Police, and her feelings about them.
Starting point is 00:17:34 What were her feelings about the police? Frustration. You could just tell she was angry and had lost all her patients with them. Now I'm waiting for answer. This is over too long. Why they take so long to find out who killed my son? 11 years. 11 years?
Starting point is 00:17:56 Have you kept in touch with the police all these years? What have they told you? Nothing. Sometimes we call, they not answer. They don't do nothing in the case. Jeanette raised Brian and his siblings in Little Haiti, a community in northern Miami with one of the largest concentrations of Haitian Americans in the country. In the 80s and 90s, if there was a headline from Little Haiti,
Starting point is 00:18:22 chances are it was a story about crime. The truth is, the family had always feared one of them would die young. They just never thought it would be Brian. So many people died around us who were lucky. I expected one of us to get killed. And I remember saying to myself, when I got to cows, like, my goodness, thank God that nobody got killed. They said all the time, like, man, nine of us, and nobody got killed, especially with our older brothers, man.
Starting point is 00:18:49 And you would never think that the last child, in college, his senior year, you get killed. You would never think it, especially because Brian had been on track to be a football star. For the Padas, football was supposed to be a way out of Little Haiti. So Edwin played at Florida International University and Florida State. Edric played two seasons at a junior. College in San Jose before transferring to Virginia Union University. And Brian, of course,
Starting point is 00:19:24 chose the University of Miami. Brian would join the University of Miami at a high point for that school's football program, a program that took kids like Brian from Miami's neighborhoods and turned them into NFL stars, a program known simply as the U. Take a look at Coral Gables. It's a place of doing. of recreation and cultural activity in many forms. It's learning at the University of Miami where young people of every age study everything on the business of fine arts.
Starting point is 00:20:11 When you drive from downtown Miami to coral gables, it's like you've traveled to a different, more affluent world. Luxury cars fill up parking lots. There are fountains in the middle of the roundabouts, and well-manicured lawns surround giant, Mediterranean-style houses. Coral Gables is its own city, a city built around a medium-sized private university, the University of Miami. The second you drove around this town and you saw how beautiful
Starting point is 00:20:44 the place was and you saw the lifestyle that college students have when they're here, it's why it got the reputation as suntan you. Billy Corbin is a lifelong Miamian. He's also the director of two 30 for 30 films about the University of Miami. He's a little obsessed with the place. My grandfather graduated from the University of Miami School of Law about 70 years ago before the current campus even existed. He has had season tickets to the Miami Hurricanes since he was a student there 70 years ago. I am also a graduate of the University of Miami. I'm profoundly in debt, not indebted to, but in debt as a result of my attendance at the University of Miami. Today, the University of Miami carries the legacy of being a hard-hitting, trash-talking football program with a chip on its shoulder.
Starting point is 00:21:38 Billy says that story began in 1979 when Miami hired Howard Schnellenberger to be their head coach. It's going to be our objective to move the program forward in such a manner that we can rank with the very best in the country. Howard came in with no resources, with not a lot of money, with not an opportunity, with not an opportunity. opportunity to send assistant coaches on the road buying plane tickets so they could go scout players in other states. And then the creative solution was, why don't we recruit Miami and plant our flag here? Well, we recruit heavily in state and heavily in South Florida. The bulk of our talent comes from this area. And that became a real point of pride for a lot of people in Miami. And Snellenberger's strategy? It worked.
Starting point is 00:22:26 Miami's played a great football game. They certainly deserve to be national champions. By the end of the 1983 season, Miami's football team won its first national championship ever. Winning is obviously the best pitch you can make to a kid in Liberty City or in Little Haiti. Just to say like come and be a part of this winning tradition and create an opportunity for yourself not only from high school to college, but from college to the NF. felt. As the team won, they became notorious for their antics, on and off the field. Antics that earned them their national bad boy reputation. Take one incident from 1987 when the hurricanes played against Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl. The team walked off their plane wearing top-to-bottom
Starting point is 00:23:20 military fatigues and sunglasses. The Miami squad made noise the moment it reached Phoenix. They looked like extras in a Rambo movie. The image is iconic. Media coverage at the time tilted strongly against the hurricanes. Are these guys really thugs, or did they just put on this kind of image for the fiesta ball? Because Miami recruited locally, their team was largely made up of players from Miami's black neighborhoods. Once they were hurricanes, these players became celebrities almost overnight. When sports reporters would moralize,
Starting point is 00:23:56 about the team, they'd use code words like inner city, but you could tell they meant black. Well, they have their reputation because they've had a lot of problems with police. They've had fights with fellow students. They've had one player was arrested for allegedly hitting his girlfriend. Any idea why? I mean, are they just some problem? They give the excuse that they live in a big city, but that doesn't condone anything. We had this college team on the rise, and it was a college team made up predominantly of Miami kids, And it was a major point of pride for everybody in this town, particularly when the team played with an us-against-the-world mentality. And Miami had this us-against-the-world mentality.
Starting point is 00:24:37 This us-against-the-world mentality would only grow stronger after an NCAA corruption scandal hit the football program in 1995. University of Miami players reportedly took cash prizes for big plays in violation of NCAA rules. The accusations became part of Miami's lore. There were out-of-control football dorms, run-ins with the police, trips to strip clubs on official visits, money, sex drugs, you name it. The NCAA banned the canes from playing in a bowl game for one season and hit the team with other sanctions. The NCAA put the school on three years probation for handing out unauthorized financial aid to football players. Their probation undermined the team's standing in performance for a while. But the talent pool of recruits was still strong.
Starting point is 00:25:27 By the end of the decade, the Cains were back. Dorsey, play fake, wants it all. Going to the end zone. Touchdown. Right in stride to Andre Johnson. Great call. These are years in which the Miami Hurricanes should have won three national championships in a row. By 2001, Miami fielded what many considered to be the best college football team of all time.
Starting point is 00:25:52 Well, Miami has erased all doubts about the national champions. They are clearly the national champions of college football in the year 2001. Those early 2000s Miami teams had guys like Ed Reed, Jeremy Shockey, Santana Moss, Willis Begahi, Devin Hester. The list goes on. These were the teams Brian was watching as an elite recruit at Miami Central High School. In 2003, when Brian was a high school senior, he and his brother Edric watched Miami play Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl. Yeah, because we watched the championship game when they lost.
Starting point is 00:26:31 He started to cry. It is fourth down the final play unless they can stick it in the end zone. Darcy under pressure, throws it. Incomplete, the Buckeyes win. That game cemented Brian's decision to become a hurricane. I'm going to that school. That's school I want to play. play for, I'm going to Miami.
Starting point is 00:26:56 I said, I make your decision. Yeah, I'm going to Miami. Why was it important for him to go to Miami? He go to Miami because I'm here. That's why maybe he don't want to leave me because sometimes he said, Mom, I want you cook food for me. Anywhere I go, you have to cook for me because I love the food. So that's why.
Starting point is 00:27:29 From the players and coaches all the way down to the athletic trainers and equipment managers, there are a lot of people who make up a powerhouse college football team, easily 200. You can feel that when a game is about to start. Waves and waves of people pack onto the field. It's part of what makes college football so different from other sports, the sheer numbers.
Starting point is 00:28:05 And so within this giant team, you have position groups within defense and offense. Brian played defensive end, and the guys on the defensive line were among his closest friends. Ladies and gentlemen, number 93, Elaine Hill.
Starting point is 00:28:24 Called a catfish. Duane Hendricks, aka Catfish, went on to play for the New York Giants. But back in college, Duane was on the defensive line with Brian. Eventually, they became roommates. How did you spend your free time?
Starting point is 00:28:44 After games, I remember this, we would be like small little bars, to get wings between me and him. We're trying to pound back 50 to 100 wings on average. In the all season, you know, we trained. And then, yeah, we went out a little bit to some clubs and things like that. Nothing too extreme. As their friendship grew, Brian started inviting Dwayne to his family's house for dinner.
Starting point is 00:29:16 I remember him bringing me to his mom's house. Haitian people cook the same thing that Jamaicans cooked because we had rice and peas. I remember that and it tasted the same way. So it brought me back to my high school days with his family being Haitian and my family being Jamaican. I think we have some of the same values work hard, you know, keep your head down, and you get things that you want out of life. It's because of them. The bad is that was my home.
Starting point is 00:29:47 It was my second home. And honestly, I didn't call my mom as much as I should have because I already had people. I looked at his mom, like, as my mom. I looked at his brothers, as my brothers. Everybody used to think that we were related and we were brothers or something like that. That's Eric Bunker. Eric and Brian were actually rivals back when they played for different high schools in Miami. I thought that I was the number one defensive end in Dade County.
Starting point is 00:30:15 And then all of a sudden, his dudes ranked the head of me. And, you know, I was mad about it. I was pissed. I used to say his name wrong on purpose. You know, who was this paid-up kid? Like, who was paid up? Brian paid up. But they became friends when they started playing together on the hurricanes.
Starting point is 00:30:35 Brian gave Eric his nickname. He was like, Edie, this is your Haitian name. This is your Haitian. I was like, all right, man, whatever. So ever since then, everybody's been calling me Edie. In his junior year, Brian, got a camcorder. University of Miami
Starting point is 00:30:53 at night. The dorms over there. And this is a front entrance of this too. And started making videos of his time in college. Yeah, though. Check your boy out.
Starting point is 00:31:07 You know what I am? Feel me? Chut my biceps out. He carried that camcorder around everywhere. These tapes capture Brian as a football player,
Starting point is 00:31:18 hanging out with his teammates before early morning workouts. What's up, Dad? Wake up. We got a long day today, though. What? Fucking, we got practice in the morning, class. 30 hard parties in the afternoon.
Starting point is 00:31:32 They capture Brian's love of cars. You know, this you boy. It's a container, big patter. You know what I'm saying, y'all on my cars or whatnot. They capture him joking around on campus. No bullshit, no torn his face. Come here, boy. And, cat calling women on the streets of Miami.
Starting point is 00:31:54 All the way, live, baby. What about, man, shake something for the camera. Ain't going to shake none? He ain't got nothing to shake anyway. They're a perfect time capsule of Brian's life, and that mid-2000s pre-smartphone era. He had that smile, though, like that laugh. Chris Zellner played tight end and was also one of Brian's friends.
Starting point is 00:32:29 And I'm telling you, that shit lit up the room. He made everybody laugh. He was just one of those guys that you wanted to be around. Smiling and goofy and kind of annoying. That's how a lot of people at the U remembered him, like Carol Walker, his academic advisor. Brian was a jokester. If he knew it was something little thing that annoyed you, but you couldn't be mad at him, he would do it. So for me, it was the gold chain, and it was kind of whatever the charms were,
Starting point is 00:32:56 they clanked all the freaking time, and I couldn't stand it. And I was like, put it in your shirt. I'm so tired. But then again, that's how I knew he was coming down the hallway. Brian would go, Ms. Walker, Miss Walker, and then he would just keep saying it. And I'd be like, do you want anything? And he would just laugh because he knew that got on my nerves. Brian's mischievous sense of humor stood out on the team, that and his love for his mom. He'd put his daily phone calls with her on speaker so his teammates could hear. Here's his teammate, Dave Howell. And you would hear her talking, and I was like, oh, she sounds so sweet.
Starting point is 00:33:31 You know, she'd always be asking them, did you eat? You know, how are you doing? How was your day? You know, and just the level of affection he showed to his mom, and he demonstrated it to everybody. He didn't just kind of hide in the corner like, oh, hey, Mom, just calling you real quick. He showed in anybody who you speak to, knew, you know, his mom.
Starting point is 00:33:54 On the outside, Brian seemed carefree. He could make anyone laugh. His family and teammates loved him. He was about to celebrate his first anniversary with his girlfriend, Jada Brody. He had every expectation of going to the NFL. But there was also this. In the months before his death,
Starting point is 00:34:16 something had been troubling, Brian. So there was something bothering him. And he was trying to say it, you know. But he didn't know how to express it, tell us. He didn't want to burden you with it, but he kept it in. And then this was the thing that hurt us, man. I was like, man, if you just would have opened up, just tell us what the heck is going on. I said, did somebody threaten you?
Starting point is 00:34:43 Don't worry about it, man. But he did tell his brother that he was having nightmares. I keep getting away, man, but they keep chasing me. You know, like bad nightmares. I don't know. I think his girlfriend said that at the time that she would wake up to see Brian sleeping in the closet, you know, because he's fighting these things in his dreams and his sleep. He never told his brother who might be chasing him.
Starting point is 00:35:09 But Edric knew the reason Brian might have felt safe sleeping in his closet. It was because of what he kept in there. He would go in the closet and just be hiding. And, you know, he would go trying to go. grabbed his gun, you know, his concealed weapons that he had. When Brian gave that tour to Manning Navarro, the Miami Herald Reporter,
Starting point is 00:35:32 weeks before his death, there was something in the apartment he didn't want on video. I got to hide my guns, man. You got licenses for him, right? Yeah, I got license. Yeah, man, they're straight, you know what? No, don't add them, uh, the gun thing on the paper or whatnot, please.
Starting point is 00:35:49 No, it's not going to be the paper. All right. The thing is, Brian Paddo wasn't the only one on the team with a gun. Reserve safety, Willie Cooper was shot and slightly wounded outside his off-campus apartment by a gunman hiding in the bushes. We carried him from protection because you just never know when you need it. That's next time on Murder at the U. And later this season... An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody.
Starting point is 00:36:30 Well, come and get it then. You know where you can find me? I'm actually getting a little bit uncomfortable with this whole thing. He had $14,000 cash in the car, and I say something you're right. This is an assassination, and there's more to this than meets the eye. A lot of people thought we had a killer amongst us. I stopped looking into it because I was warned that these people will literally come up in your house and kill your family. Does MDPD know who killed Brian Potter?
Starting point is 00:37:07 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 Devaro. Story editing by Adisa Egan. Additional editing by Ben Weber and Mike Drago.
Starting point is 00:37:33 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.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.