Crime Weekly - S1 Ep22: Tragic Accident or Police Cover-Up?: Kendrick Johnson (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

It is a case that has stumped and enraged millions of people around the world. Since 17 year old Kendrick Johnson was found dead, in a rolled up gym mat, the question has remained; was this a tragic accident, or a well orchestrated and quickly hidden murder. Law enforcement has ruled Kendrick’s death an accident, his family have never wavered from their opinion that Kendrick was the victim of foul play. And now, almost a decade after the case was closed, authorities are reopening the case and examining possible new evidence.  Today, we will discuss the case, go over the evidence, old and new, and hopefully find ourselves one step closer to the answer. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NhRiyowalHnbKjveNQxxA Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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bettering your business takes working with the best with the james hardy alliance you gain access to leads training networking and support from the number one brand of siding in north america achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. It is a case that has stumped and enraged millions of people around the world. Since 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a rolled-up gym mat, the question has remained. Was this a tragic accident or a well-orchestrated and quickly hidden murder? Law enforcement has ruled Kendrick's death an accident. His family has never wavered from their opinion that Kendrick was the victim of foul play. And now, almost a decade after the case was closed,

authorities are reopening the case and examining possible new evidence. Today, we will discuss the case, go over the evidence, old and new, and hopefully find ourselves one step closer to the answer. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. You sound so enthused about being Derek Levasseur today. You always have like this big like opening where you're like so happy and I'm like, I'm trying to match it, but it's just not me. And I always feel like I'm being disingenuous when I do it. Can you give me like a happy, I'm Derek Levasseur. I just want to see what it sounds like. And I'm Derek Levasseur. I don't know. I just, I feel like it's so fake. And I'm Derek Levasseur. Yeah. You just do it. You just, you just do it better than me. I'll just do it from

now on. I'd be like, hi, I'm Stephanie Harlow and I'm Derek Levasseur. Yeah, you just do it better than me. I'll just do it from now on. I'll be like, hi, I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. Yeah, it'll make me sound more enthusiastic if you bring yours down. Oh, no, I can't do that. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you in advance. How are you?

I am, well, you know, we were just talking a little bit before we hit record about how I think I have food poisoning. But other than that, you know, I'm okay. Good, good. We had a good conversation. We can't get into it too much, but had a good meeting today with the people over at CrimeCon. For anybody who doesn't follow us on social media, we announced last week that Stephanie and I will be attending CrimeCon. Not only will we be there as a podcast row, we're going to be, we have a really, really cool topic we're going to be discussing as a speaking event. And in addition to that, we're going to be recording a Crime Weekly episode down there live. So you're

going to be able to attend that episode recording. You'll be able to participate to a certain degree. We have another guest who's going to be joining us. So if you haven't already bought tickets and you'd like to check it out, CrimeCon is going to be in Austin this year. It might already be sold out, but they are selling virtual tickets, I believe. Yeah. I think that they said that they have a wait list right now, but you can also attend virtually, which I think a lot of people are choosing to do because of the situation. But I'm excited to be there in person. Like you said, we have a great panel planned. I don't want to tell you who yet, but we will talk about it soon. But we are bringing

on somebody who has experienced the loss of a child. And this person is very well-versed on the case. And it's a very in-depth, interesting case. It breaks my heart. So I can't wait to share it with you guys. And I think it's going to be a really positive, I don't know, addition to CrimeCon. I agree. And CrimeCon agrees as well. And it's one of the things we were talking about. And I want to pose the question to you guys, whether you're listening on audio or watching on YouTube, there's going to be a lot of merchandise being sold down there. We're a very new channel. So we weren't planning on it. And we still really aren't as far as selling anything at CrimeCon, but we want to pose a question to you guys. Stephanie and I were talking about doing a very limited small run of Crime Weekly t-shirts, and we want

to gauge your interest. So if you're watching this on YouTube, comment down below, let us know what you think, if you'd be interested in something like that. And if it's not a t-shirt, what you'd be more interested in, even though we're leaning towards a t-shirt. And if you're listening on the podcast, you should go subscribe to our YouTube channel. But if you don't want to do that, just comment on our Instagram or on our Twitter and let us know what you think. Because I want to gauge first and foremost, the interest, but also how big it is, because that would obviously determine what size run of shirts we do. So we need to hear from you guys.

If you're not interested, what makes it easy for us, right? We don't have to do anything. I personally think we should do a shirt and a coffee mug, but you guys are going to have to work on convincing Derek with me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm game to do. It's just we keep saying it. You and I, we're running the show.

So it's only us. It's like we keep saying it. You and I, we're running the show. So it's only us. It's not like there's like a team of people behind us. So we're so focused on making sure we get good episodes out to you guys every week, high quality YouTube audio, the sound, the video, everything's good. So to add in that other wrinkle of shipping, we talked about some other logistical options that you have used for your merchandise. So there's options. We'll get it done.

If you guys really want it, we're going to make it happen. And we're just about to hit 25,000 subscribers on YouTube. So thank you so much for that. And maybe this is a way of saying thank you to you guys. We'll get this done. So if you want to have a Crime Weekly piece of merch, we'll make it happen. I think that it's going to be great. And it will be way better than the CrossFit t-shirt that Derek's wearing today. Yikes. And this is, I'm not even,

damn. I'm just messing with you. Yikes. You fly your flag high. And I don't even do CrossFit. This is my buddy. He owns this company, but yeah, you called me out. So it is what it is. It is what it is. I feel wow like i'm gonna show up next time wearing a t-shirt that says like namaste and shape you know i'm gonna really like go all out for the for the fitness puns stephanie's always making fun of me but anyways let us know now i lost my thunder i'm just feeling like i'm like wearing a crossFit shirt and I haven't worked out in a month. But yeah, whatever. No big deal. Listen, it's fine. But today, it's fine.

I don't think I've worked out in a month either. But I'm not the one wearing a CrossFit shirt. I'm just messing with him, guys. Don't abuse me in the comments because- Everyone's been saying you're being mean to me. No, they say I'm mean to you. Thank you, guys. It's just my sarcastic personality.

I'm the same. And I'm fragile. I'm fragile. He's not fragile. Don't let him fool you. Don't hit me, Stephanie. Don't hit me. He's always like, Stephanie, I don't mean this to be offensive. And I'm like, just stop saying that. He's like, I don't mean this as an insult when he's trying to tell me real talk. I'm like, just give me the real talk. I'm okay with it. No, we're good. The way we talk on here, I was listening to another podcast the other day, and it's like, I don't have a radio voice. We don't have radio voices. The way you guys are hearing us talk to each other right now is the same way we talk when we're recording or not

recording. So we have a good relationship. I appreciate people defending me, but I don't need it. It's unnecessary. We have a very good relationship. We know how to talk to each other. He's not abused. I'm not abused. So listen, this case, fascinating case. Should we tell them why we're covering it now? This is a case that's a little older. Why the decision now? Why did we decide to make this the next episode that we cover? Yeah. Well, I mean, I've been asked to cover this on YouTube for years, for years. And, you know, at that time, it kind of had already been closed. And it seemed like it was set on what the ending was. You know, the police had already closed it, but it has just been reopened.

And this is the Kendrick Johnson case. I'm sure you guys know because you've already seen the title of the podcast. But the Kendrick Johnson case has been reopened. So we thought we would take this opportunity to cover it together you've already seen the title of the podcast, but the Kendrick Johnson case has been reopened. So we thought we would take this opportunity to cover it together because I really would appreciate having Derek's law enforcement experience on this one because I do have questions about the police investigation. And we thought we would go through the evidence. This is going to be in multiple parts. So I'll give you a heads up. I know some people like to know ahead of time.

This will be in multiple parts because we want to do it justice. There's a lot of evidence. There's a lot of allegations. There's a lot of stuff flying around there. Some is rumors and gossip online. Some are things that Kendrick Johnson's family have come right out and alleged. There's also definite issues with the police investigation. So we are going to try to be fair. We're going to go through it. The first part, we're going to talk about

the evidence and the initial investigation, and then we'll go from there. And in the next part, we'll be more focused on the Johnsons, Kendrick's mother and father, and the groups that they came together with them to find justice for Kendrick. And we'll go over kind of that timeline. So just hang in with us. I promise it will be worth it. We're going to go very in depth, but I think that this case really deserves it. I agree. I remember the first time I heard about this case, I was actually on location filming Breaking Homicide. And in a lot of these shows, you'll have locals from the area who become part of the production crew, the individuals who have an expertise that are from that area. And I had a gentleman come up to me after filming.

We were having a bite to eat. Usually the crew would get together and he said, hey, I know we just met a couple of days ago, but I'd like to talk to you if you don't mind. And I said, yeah, no problem. And he pulled me aside and he said, listen, this is the case. You know, he was a person of color, right? And he's like, listen, I just feel like this is another situation where if this individual was white, this would already be solved. And I was like, let me look at it.

And we went through the whole thing together. It wasn't like details, but he gave me a couple links. I remember going back to my room and looking into it. And it was something that I was genuinely interested in covering for season three. We didn't have a film season three. We don't know if we're going to, but it still could be something down the road that would happen. But that was the first time I heard of it. I looked at it and then I put it away because I was covering another case the following week, but it was something that was always on the back of my mind. And then when you brought up the fact that it was reopened, I'm like, okay, now this is the perfect time to cover it.

And I mean, don't get me wrong. This is it's a very complicated case. So most of the people I talk to in the true crime community and otherwise, they say, yeah, we think it was an accident, but there's so much about it. There's a few things that just don't fit into place properly that keeps us from going 100% like we can say without a shadow of a doubt that this was an accident. So that's really, I think those are the kinds of cases that are the most frustrating, right? Because there's no clear-cut answer. And his family deserves to have that clear-cut answer. His family deserves to be satisfied with the outcome. Agreed. 100%. I'm glad we're covering it. All right. So without further ado, let's dive in. Kendrick Lamar

Johnson was born on October 10th, 1995 to his parents, Kenneth and Jacqueline Johnson. They lived in Valdosta, which is located in the far southern portion of Georgia near the Florida-Georgia line. At the time of his death, Kendrick was a sophomore at Lowndes High School, where he was a member of multiple sports teams, including basketball, track, and football. But football was the passion in his life, and those who knew him said he was a safety who hit like a linebacker. Now, I don't follow football, so I'm not exactly sure what that means. But from what I can tell, he was an excellent football player, and he dreamed of one day playing professionally.

Kendrick often went by the nickname KJ, so that's what I'm going to refer to him in this podcast. He was described as sweet, quiet, and unlikely to start trouble. According to Grantland.com, KJ really started fights, but when he was provoked, he would finish them. Besides football, he was very interested in math and science, and he wanted to one day learn to grill as well as his father and attend college to play football. The day this all happened was January 10, 2013. KJ's father, Kenneth, who worked as a truck driver, was out of town in Pennsylvania. And at around 930 in the evening, KJ's mother, Jackie, started to get worried because her son had not arrived home from school.

He'd been planning to attend a basketball game at the school that night. And when the game was over, he was supposed to call Jackie or another family member to come pick him up. When this call never came, Jackie got into her car and drove to the high school to see if anyone was still there, but she couldn't find him. Jackie didn't know who her son would be with, and he was always home by 1130 on school nights, so she called 911 to report her son missing.

Now, she claims at this point she was told by the dispatcher that KJ was probably just out with some friends or a girl. But Jackie insisted that this wasn't like her son. He would have found a way to get in contact with her or someone else in the family, like one of his siblings. And at that point, a missing persons report was filed. And I do understand the annoyance of a mother who's trying to report their child missing missing only to be told like, oh, you're overreacting. He's a kid. Boys will be boys kind of thing. And the same thing happened in the Kanika Jenkins case, which is very similar to this case where Kanika's mother called the hotel and was like, hey, you know, well, actually, she called the police first.

And the police were like, oh, she's at a hotel party drinking. She's probably just passed out in somebody's room. And that's completely unacceptable. A mother knows their child better than anyone knows them. And if she feels like something is off or wrong, then she needs to be listened to. Agree. And this goes back to Cynthia Hoffman as well, right? We had just discussed this exact topic as far as a parent knowing their child better than the dispatcher. And I agree with it, especially when it's a child. Again, the rule with the child is obviously if they're under a certain age, it's an immediate thing. But again, the

parent was insistent. They took the report and they went out, they started looking for him. And again, to your point, it's a little frustrating to have that resistance at all. Completely understand it. I don't disagree with it. And just to go back on your football comment earlier, I didn't want to interrupt you. Basically, them saying that he played safety, but he hit like a linebacker. Basically, it's saying he played a position where they're not necessarily known for hitting that hard. Linebackers kill you when they hit you. And it was a compliment to say, he hits like a truck. So he was a very good football player. And that was definitely a comment meant to indicate that he was someone that if he tackled you, you knew it. Yeah. And he was very strong. You can tell just looking at his pictures. This is somebody who

took care of himself, probably did a lot of working out, kept his body in peak physical performance because he was this, you know, multi-season athlete. So, which also brings a lot of questions into how he ended up dying because many people wondered how does a young, strong man like this end up, you know, stuck in a gym mat? Yeah. Yeah. We're going to dive into it for sure because there are, those are, those are reasonable questions to ask. You would think someone of that physical shape would be able to get themselves out of that situation if it was the way some people think it is as far as what happened to him. Well, at this point, Jackie obviously can't sleep. Her son's not home. Her husband's out of town. So she has her mother come over and they sit together all night, just worried

about Kendrick. And around 4am, she gets a call from the police and they sit together all night just worried about Kendrick. And around 4 a.m., she gets a call from the police and they let her know, hey, we got the missing persons report. We're out looking for your son. And I mean, to be honest, I'm sure she didn't sleep much, if at all, that night. And by 830 in the morning, Jackie was up and she was headed to the high school. Now, Jackie actually drove school buses for this school that I think the Lowndes County School District in general, she drove school buses. That was her job. And normally in the morning, she would drive to the school and she would bring Kendrick with her. And that's how he

would get to school every morning. But this morning, she drove there alone without her son. She didn't know where her son was and she wanted answers. So she gets to the school around 830 a.m. And 30 minutes prior to this, reporting officer Michael Adams had arrived at the high school and he was following up on the missing persons report. So obviously he's going to go to school and he wants to see if Kendrick's been to class. He wants to find out when was the last time the people at the school saw Kendrick. And he asked the secretary to contact KJ's teacher, Bobby Wilson, to see if KJ was in class. And Wilson reported back that he was not. So Kendrick should have been in a class that morning. He wasn't. And at this point, the police officer realized that he wasn't in school at all. Now, when Jackie Johnson

arrived at the school, she asked at the main office if anyone had seen her son. And it's reported differently. So in the police reports, it says that she went to the principal's office. In the media, it says she was brought to a counselor's office, a guidance counselor's office. I'm not sure it really matters, but there is discrepancies there. And I will say that there's a lot of discrepancies between what's reported in the police reports and what's reported in the media. Well, that's a pretty common occurrence, right? I mean, that's fair to say. I think you're right. Not to this extent. I've never really seen a case where so many details are inaccurate. And then that makes you wonder, like, who's right? You know, obviously, we want to think the police reports are right, because they were on the scene. But now you have this,

this point of contention, which is that Kendrick's parents inevitably end up thinking that the police department and the school and everyone is involved in this cover up of their son's death. So then that does have you questioning what was written in the police report, obviously. I can only speak from my personal experience and I can tell you numerous times as a supervisor, I would give very limited information to the media when they would inquire about a certain case we were working. However, even though we were the only funnel giving out that information, when they reported it, they always had anonymous sources that had all this other information. And again, just my perspective as a cop, take it with whatever, you know, however you want to take it. Most of the time I'd sit, be sitting there watching the

episode as they're talking about it on the news and sitting there looking at my guys, like that's completely inaccurate. We haven't said that to anyone. We haven't confirmed. Where did they get this from? If they have this information, we'd love to speak to that source because this is the first time we're hearing of it. That's just from my perspective. But again, there's a lot more layers to this story ultimately that you're going to talk about. And so I see why it's a point that we have to bring up now because it's going to be very important later. Correct. Yes. And I don't want to go into this making anybody think that we're blindly believing one side or the other. We're really looking at this with fresh eyes. Neither one of us have dug too deeply into it before. Like you said, you looked it over. I've looked it over. But we've never really dug in. So this is the first time that we're really getting into it. And we're going to be as fair and unbiased as possible. So Jackie's in either the principal's office or the guidance counselor's office. And while this is happening, Michael Adams, he's still at the school. He's the responding police officer for the missing persons report.

And he starts like printing pictures of KJ. And then the principal secretary told him as he was doing this, that Jackie was at the school and she was in the office. So he goes to talk to her. And at this point, you know, he's probably asking her, who would your son be with? Like, who are his friends? And Jackie tells him, you know, he doesn't have any girlfriends, no serious girlfriends. He does have like a best friend that he hangs out with in school. And so she gave the name of this friend to Adams and Adams called the dispatcher and was like, hey, you know, can you send an officer over to this person's house? Check if they've seen KJ, if KJ is there. And then that's when Officer Adams found out that this friend of KJ's had been suspended, so he wasn't at school. And that's why he had to send a police officer to his house.

But this friend hadn't seen or heard from KJ either. Yeah, not good. But I'm glad to see where their head's at at that point. They're going to the closest friends to them that they know of. And we just talked about taking the report and how the dispatcher was a little apprehensive or maybe even trying to deter Jackie from filing it, which we both don't like. But I do like to see that this guy was out there four o'clock in the morning starting and then first thing in the morning without even knowing that Jackie was on the premise, he was at the school printing out colored photos. And that's important because the first 24 to 48 hours of a missing

person case are critical. So I love to see the fact and hear the fact that he was there bright and early trying to do something and making those calls and asking those questions and sending people over to the known associates house. So, so far, I like what I'm hearing so far is how the investigation as far as this being a missing persons was conducted. Yeah. Up to this point, it seems like they're taking it very seriously. And Adams wasn't the only one on it because as this all was happening, two other police officers, Detective Pretty and Detective Marion, were also driving to the school. They were also following up on the missing persons report, but that's when they heard over their radio that a student had been found unresponsive in the old gym. So Lowndes High School has two gyms. One's called the new gym. The other is

called the old gym. Not very creative names, but they seem to work. Let's hope the newer gym is called new gym. Let's just hope that. That would be really confusing. When there's a third gym, brand new gym. The newer gym. Well, I mean, the old gym, it seemed to still be used for, you know, a lot of things like classes and practices and stuff. And it was located north of the cafeteria and it had bleachers along the north and south side walls. Now, the day before, on Wednesday, January 9th, the school had just reconvened after winter break. So winter break, I mean, in my area, it's about like 10 days had just reconvened after winter break. So winter break, I mean, in my area, it's about like 10 days. So it's a pretty lengthy break. And in the old gym, there were several gym mats that were rolled up. So these gym mats were usually stored in this gym.

But then there was additional gym mats that were brought into the gym during break. And all of them had been rolled up and placed against the wall in the southwest corner. What I'm thinking is, because it's never stated specifically why, a lot of those mats had previously been located on their sides, but now they were all standing up. And I think there was about 21 of them. And it's never explicitly stated why they're standing up.

But what I think it is, is during breaks, that's when the school will have cleaners come in and clean the floors and stuff, because there's not a lot of opportunity to do it otherwise. And so they probably stacked all those mats up. We're not sure why, but that is how they were. I had read that too, in a newspaper article that was basically saying, listen, it didn't say that were for cleaning purposes, but it was to take up a smaller area of space. Obviously if they're standing upright, they're going to take up a smallest, you know, square footage. They're going to have a smaller footprint, which to your assumption, I think you're probably right. Cleaning the gym over the break, less moving it around.

Also, you got to think about it. They do stand up a little better. They don't, they don't move as much. So if there's cleaning companies in there, they push on the mat, they start rolling all over the place. It's easier just to stand them up. But I do think the first part is accurate as far as most of the time, these mats were on their side. It just so happened because of these circumstances, they were standing up. I think some of them were located standing up sometimes, but some of them were located on their sides. And I remember coming back after a school break and it looked like it was a new school. I was like, why are those bulletin boards over there now

and not over here? You know, it was always like a big surprise what you're gonna see different. So on January 11th, Philip Pipelow, and he's a coach at the school, he was teaching a life sports class in the old gym. And during the class, two students who were also sisters, they finished the survey that Philip Pipelow had handed out. So it was just like a,

you know, a little worksheet to do. They finished the worksheet and then they both walked up to the mats and they kind of climbed on top of them to lay down on top of the mats. Now rolled up, these mats stood at about six feet tall, a little over, and they were about three feet wide. And there were several of them, like I said, 21 or more, all stacked up next to each other. So there was more than one row of mats as well. There was a back row of mats and then the front row of the mats, and they're all stacked up next to each other. And the back row is pressed up against the wall and wedged in between the wall and the other mats. So one of the girls said that she'd been on top of the mats for a few minutes when she noticed what looked like a pair of feet with socks on them inside of

one of the mats. And she thought at first someone was messing around, like someone was hiding in there trying to scare them or, you know, make a prank. So at that point, she called some other students over like, oh, you know, look at this. What do you make of this? You know, like somebody's trying to play a prank on me. And it was at this point that the students kind of figured out something wasn't right. You know, the person inside the mats isn't moving. They get scared. They start screaming. And at that point, they called Philip Pipelow over their teacher. The police report states that Mr. Pipelow came over and was unable to free the person from the mat. So he and another student began hurriedly pulling down each mat one at a time until they arrived at the mat that had the person inside of it.

And then they pulled that one down as well. Now, Mr. Pipe Lowe said that no one ever touched the body, but he could tell that the person inside was dead because of the smell and because the person wasn't moving. Once the mat containing the body was pulled down, it's reported that, you know, the body sort of halfway came out of the mat. And there was also quite a bit of blood and vomit present. And at some point, either while the mats were getting pulled down or as soon as they discovered that this was an actual dead body, the police were called. Now, I'm not sure this was another thing that I wondered about. And this could just be me. But they said that they were unable to remove the person from the mat. So they

had to pull the mats down. But then Philip Pipelow also said nobody ever touched the body. So I'm not sure if he just kind of looked at it and said, oh, I don't think we can get him out this way. So we have to pull the mats down. But it made it seem to me that they had attempted to get him out this way. So we have to pull the mats down. But it made it seem to me that they had attempted to get him out by touching the body and realized they couldn't. And that's why they had to pull the mats down. So I'm not sure how both things can be true at once, but it's possible. It could just be a miscommunication maybe in the report. Miscommunication in the report or misunderstanding of what Mr. Paipolo said. I would think reasonably that if I thought someone was rolled up in a mat and there was a chance that I could help them, the first thing that I would have done naturally would be to try to pull on their feet to pull them out.

And, you know, I wouldn't just yell down, hello, can you hear me? And never touch them, never make an attempt to try to free them. I think it's unreasonable to assume that someone would do that. So my guess would be that they did make some sort of attempt to pull him out. And that may be why when they finally pulled the mat down, he kind of came out a little bit more easily without being touched because they could maybe have loosened him a little bit, or they figured out an angle where as soon as they put the mat on the ground, he slid out a little bit more just on his own naturally. But I think it's unreasonable to assume they didn't even attempt

to try to pull him out when they realized it was a human being in there. Yeah. I don't think that his body slid out because they had touched him. I think it was just when the mat came down, obviously it doesn't have anything holding it in like a burrito, or like a... Gravity. Gravity. It's just going to loosen up a little bit because you don't have those other mats on the side or on the front, keeping everything tight. So I compressed. Yeah. It's a good point. Those other mats, you know, we're talking about these mats, they're probably pushed up against each other. So it's, it's, it's compressing the area that Kendrick is actually in at that point,

you know? And it was holding him in there. It. Right. So Officer Michael Adams, he's obviously already at the high school, like we talked about, he's printing pictures, he's trying to find out if KJ's been in class, and he was there when the body was discovered. At around 10.32 a.m., Adams was notified that a body had been found in the old gym, and within three minutes, Adams and another deputy, Carrie Quinn, approached the old gym, at which minutes Adams and another deputy, Carrie Quinn, approached the old gym at which point they claimed that they saw students running out of the gym talking about a dead body. Adams wrote in his report that as he entered the gym and approached the southwest corner, he detected the mild odor of a corpse and saw a blue gym mat lying horizontally and rolled

up and in the center of the roll, Adams saw two feet with socks wearing denim jeans. The mat that KJ had been found in had been, like I said, up against the wall. Other mats had been placed in front of it and around it, and those had been taken down, but they had to move three more mats to actually get a view of what was at the other end of the rolled up gym mat. In his report, Adams wrote, quote, in the center of the roll facing south, I observed a black male torso and head wearing white exposed down to his rib cage. Both arms partially obstructed the face and were moderately stiff. The facial area was severely disfigured and swollen. The only identifying feature to the victim that I observed was the long dreadlocks, end quote.

So I do want to talk about this discovery and how Kendrick looked, but let's go to a break really quick and then we'll come back. Craftsman days are here at Lowe's with big savings on the tools you need. Save $100 on the Craftsman V26 Tool Power Tool Combo Kit. Now at $199. No matter what the project is, Craftsman's high-quality, high-performance products empower you to build on. Stop by your nearest Lowe's store and check out the full line of Craftsman tools today. Valid through 618. While supplies last.

Selection varies by location. Okay. So Officer Adams, he remembers walking to the gym. He remembers seeing the mat with Kendrick's body in it. And he says he could not identify who this young man was. The only thing that was noticeable was the dreadlocks. And it's not because Officer Adams didn't know Kendrick. I mean, I don't think he did, but he had just been printing out pictures of him. So you would think, right? Exactly. Fresh in his head.

Yes. It would be very fresh in his head. And since this happened, pictures of KJ post-mortem have been released and made public. And this is crime scene photos as well as photos of him at his funeral. And if you haven't seen them yet, and you had a hard time or you have a hard time with this kind of stuff, I do not encourage you to go and seek them out. I really don't. Take my word for it. They're, they're gruesome. I'm, you know, me and you, Derek, I'm sure we've seen a lot of autopsy photos. Some of our listeners has probably seen a lot of autopsy photos. But these, they're bad. They were very hard for me to look through. It's really sad. And when Officer Adams said the only identifiable feature was the dreadlocks, he wasn't trying to be like, oh, I don't know this kid. He meant it because what KJ looked like in life, young, handsome, vibrant, full of life and smiles. There was no sign of that here in his post-mortem pictures. Yeah. When I was looking at the photos, because I did look at them, I have never seen a situation. I've seen a lot of dead bodies in my career, unfortunately. I've never seen a dead body that had been hanging upside down for an

extended period of time, but I've seen multiple bodies where they were hanging right side up. And when I looked at the photos, one thing I didn't notice is that usually with a body that's been hanging up for a long period of time, there was actually one where someone got stuck in a basement window and they couldn't reach the floor. And so their feet were extremely swollen. Levitity sets in all these different things. And so when I looked at Kendrick's photos, they reminded me of that. That's the closest comparison that I can make from being suspended for an extended period of time. You have the fluid start to rush to that particular area of

the body due to gravity. And that's the best description I can give of it to you guys without having to look yourself. And you don't need to look like Stephanie said, but I think based on what I just said, you can probably come up with a pretty good idea of what we're talking about. It was really bad. His face was swollen, discolored, just, yeah, I mean, bloated almost. It's bad. I don't suggest that you seek them out, but if you really want to, they are readily available online. Some of the most available autopsy and postmortem pictures that I've ever seen, they're everywhere. So at this point, obviously the gym is immediately cleared. They tape it off. The school was locked down and then first responders

began to arrive. Now in the same building, KJ's mother's there already, right? So she's sitting there in whoever's office she's in and she starts getting texts on her phone that are saying like, what's going on at the school? No one's letting us in. There's ambulances, there's fire trucks, there's police. What's happening? And around this time, the phone in the office that she was in, it rang. And the person, whether it was the principal or the guidance counselor, they picked it up. And Jackie could overhear someone on the other end say clearly that they'd found a body in the gym. And she immediately knew that it was her son. In the old gym, firefighters and EMTs had arrived and sealed the gym off with tape.

The school was locked down. Like I said, no one in or out until the police could make sure that there was no present threat to the other students. So this is probably common, right? Because you don't know at this point. You haven't investigated. You don't know how this person died. It looks super suspicious. It looks super bad. It looks like something you'd see in a movie. So the police are obviously thinking, did this young man get killed and his attacker is still in the building? So we want to lock it down to make sure the attacker doesn't escape and also make sure probably students are in classrooms safe, almost like an active shooter situation, right?

I think it's a couple of things. I think that's definitely part of it. I also think it's the preservation of evidence. We've talked about this on numerous cases. Not only the mat, not only the gym, not only Kendrick, but this is all evidence that could potentially lead to a murderer. And that's potentially somehow still at the school. So at this point, they're locking down the gymnasium, but I'm also sure they're clearing other areas as well for forensic analysis maybe later. But to your point, I would think that if I initially saw this, we've heard the different theories out there, this could be an accident, this was a murder. I would think if I initially saw that, my initial reaction would be,

oh, this is something nefarious. There's a homicide here. There's no way this was an accident. And so that's why they went into homicide mode at that point, I think, because they're like, hey, listen, everything here, everyone out. Don't touch anything on your for this because they referred to the old gym as a crime scene and so afterwards when they said this was an accident everybody well not everybody but people who didn't believe that it was an accident they were like well why'd you call it a crime scene well you're gonna call it a crime scene at this point because you don't know this is your first time you're setting eyes on this you don't know whether a crime's been committed or not but there's no you know what else would you call it? Just the scene, I guess, but it's, it's. Oh, but you imagine if they didn't call it a crime scene, imagine if they just said, eh, we don't think it's anything, but you know, so guys just be,

they would be criticized for not, you know, assuming that it was a, you can always reduce what you think it is. Right. But if you, if you treat it as just an accident to begin with, the argument will be, and it's, it's a, it's a good? But if you treat it as just an accident to begin with, the argument will be, and it's a good argument, is that you didn't take it seriously enough. From the beginning. And if you had, and now that you think it's a homicide later, it's too late. The evidence has already been tainted. So they went into it at the highest level. Hey, this is an active crime scene. Everyone, like I just said, everyone get out because there's already contamination here. We want to try to limit the contamination going forward. And so they're right to call it a crime scene because at that particular moment,

it absolutely is a crime scene. They don't know what happened and they have to treat it to the highest level. Well, by 1108, James Thornton was on the scene and James Thornton was a crime scene investigator for the Valdosta Lowndes Regional Crime Lab. So he was advised that the body had been found positioned head first into the rolled up mat. On scene, there was already several officials and investigators from both the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office as well as the GBI. And for anybody who doesn't know, the GBI stands for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. They did a- I know some of those guys, really good, really good guys, really smart guys. Oh yeah, they're good. They're really good.

They're really good. I've worked with numerous. They're no joke. Yes. So they know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. It's a lot of seasoned veterans. It's some good investigators. If you're in GBI, you're doing the right thing. And this is all they do all day long for the state of Georgia. So if I had a crime in Georgia, I'd want them there. They know what they're talking about. In many cases, you could have the FBI, but I'd probably rather have them if it's local to Georgia because those guys know the area as well because they're there every day. Would it be redundant to bring the FBI and the GBI? Because isn't the GBI just like the FBI, just specifically for Georgia? I mean, I guess the FBI stands for federal, but it's like they- Yeah, they're still state.

But they do that deep investigation. They have criminal profilers and stuff like that, that the FBI has that most local police departments aren't going to have access to. That's the thing you got to take home is not every state has a GBI. So I think in this, as far as the hierarchy, unless needed, they probably would just go with the GBI as opposed to bringing the FBI in. But I can also tell you that the FBI has a great relationship with GBI as well. And if there's someone in the FBI that could be helpful in the investigation because of the specifics of the case, there's no problem bringing someone in there. But the GBI is fully capable of handling 99% of what's going to happen in the cases

in the state of Georgia. Well, so they're all doing this walkthrough throughout the gym and the areas outside the gym, exterior, interior, and they found out that they couldn't find any source of forced entry. Now, there was a window in the gym, I believe, that was open, but it didn't look to be forced open. It looked to just be open, you know, to let fresh air in because gyms can get pretty smelly. James Thornton also took pictures of the scene as well as a video. This is a video that you can also see online and it gives you a much better idea of what the gym looked like, like the interior of the gym,

where everything was situated, because I know I can tell you like North Wall, South Wall, Southeast Corner. But to me, that's a completely different language. I don't know anything about directionals. So I did have to watch that video to kind of get an idea of how things were set up. And he also created a three dimensional image of the scene using something called the Leisha C10 scanning system. Have you ever heard of this? I have heard of it. I've never used it, but we have used other scanning systems to create a virtual diagram of a crime scene. There's a lot of different, it's like Nike, Reebok, all that good stuff, but I've heard of it. I've never personally used it, but I have used scanning systems to create a layout, a virtual layout of a crime scene. And again, I have to just reiterate it,

all this technology, all these guys that are there, I'm assuming this, but just based on all the people that were there so fast and the length they went to document the crime scene, I think it's fair to say that they probably thought this was a homicide at this point as well. They were not treating this, eh, it's an accident. We know that. There's not one cop there, just a patrolman taking some notes. They got everyone and their brother out on the scene using all the resources and technology available to them at that time to make sure they're dotting their I's and crossing their T's. So kudos to them to this point for pulling all the

resources out that they need to, to make sure they can go back and review the information and review the crime scene at a later date to the highest level of quality so they're getting accurate information. Or if you believe that this was a coverup, you could see this as them bringing in a bunch of people to make sure that this was taken care of quickly and quietly and they're dotting their T's and crossing their I's in that manner, right? And I haven't heard too much. Can you fill me in on that? Because I haven't dove into that side of it so much. So I'm assuming you're saying- Oh, it's extensive. It's extensive. And that's even in regards to what we're talking about right now, like bringing in the virtual skin. Is there a belief out there that, again, you're putting this out here and we want to give breath to both sides, right? Because we want to stay

impartial. So is there a belief that at this point, these officers were kind of colluding together because they realized whoever committed this crime, they had already kind of figured it out and they were doing what they could to get rid of that. That's one of the beliefs, right? Is that what I'm hearing? So I don't think that at this time, while this is happening, KJ's parents are thinking this is a coverup. It wasn't until the death, the investigation finished and the death was ruled as an accident that they started saying that. Okay. They started putting pieces together in mind, like, okay, now that makes more sense if you believe that. Right. But they, they believe that the GBI, the Lowndes County Sheriff's office, the school, the funeral home, the, the morgue,

what's it called? The coroner's office, everybody, they were all in on this coverup. That is, that is what they stick to. Yeah. And you have to go with that. Basically, everyone you just laid out, just to go over, we have local police. We have the GBI. We have members from the regional crime lab, which is a completely separate entity as well. We have the Rhode Island State Crime Lab here. You have the medical examiner's office that's going to come out to collect the body for the pathologist for the autopsy. So a lot of different agencies. The funeral home that buried him?

They believe that. So a lot of different agencies involved. And then you're talking about the school as well. So a lot of people would have to be in on this for them to. And again, you're going to get into it. I know where you're going with it. But based on who the family believes could have been involved, this may make more sense to you guys watching this or listening to this as to why. Because that's the real question, right? Like, okay, Derek and Stephanie, you're giving us this other theory that the family believes occurred involving the collusion of all these agencies. Why? We're not going to say it now, but there is a reason why. And maybe to some of you, that'll make more sense. And you might go, oh, okay. I understand now why they'd be saying that. So we'll continue, but great points to bring up. I don't think that, I mean, we can say

at the end of the day. I don't want to steal it. You're running the narrative here. So I don't want to get ahead of us. We're going to get deeper into it in the next podcast, because that's when we go over what the Johnson family really believe and what actions they took to pursue this belief. But what the general belief is, is that there's two students at this school whose father is an FBI agent. were worked together or separately. I'm not sure which, but they worked together, I guess, to kill KJ and then had his body hidden and then just basically had their fathers, buddies, and all the law enforcement people. And this is just a grand scheme, which if you're trying to sell that to somebody, I'm a good person to sell it to because I'm a big conspiracy theory nut. I really enjoy them. They're fun puzzles for my brain. But then you add in the school and the funeral home and things like that,

and it muddies the waters a little bit. But to your point, it may make more sense to people now. Why would all these entities even risk their careers doing this? Oh, the potential suspects are related to an FBI agent. They're maybe friends with this guy. Now it would give them an incentive. That would be the motive behind doing it. So it's not like they just decided on this specific case, ah, you know what? We're going to cover it up. There would be a reason behind it. So it's not like Kendrick's family just pulled this out of left field for no reason. As they learn the potential suspects and who they were and how they were related to someone in an authoritative position, that's when they

started to take this stance. So again, we're not saying you should believe one thing or the other. We're just trying to give you all sides to it, make sure we're given a 360 degree perspective and you take the information and develop your own opinions. That's what we really want to want here. We want to create that dialogue. Yes. And there was a lot of people, a lot of people that they thought were involved in this. And I think, you know, they would later bring a bunch of lawsuits against all of these people. There was something like over 30, 30 individuals listed in these complaints that they thought had been a part of the cover up. So we'll get there. Trust me. But Thornton, who's from the crime lab, the regional crime lab, he said that during this,

you know, all of the investigators wore gloves the whole time. So they followed normal protocol. However, I did notice that in some of the pictures, they don't appear to be wearing those little booty things. So I don't know if that's kind of like a mandatory or if that's just something that it's like, well, you know, maybe if you feel like it, but it's a gym, I don't know. What do you think about that? Common practice would be to always suit up. We have what's called Tyvek suits, the white suits you see them or the black suits with the booties and the gloves and masks, everything. You want to cover up your hair as well because you have fibers from your hair. So the simple answer is yes, they should be wearing booties. I can tell you that doesn't always happen. And sometimes it's more egregious than

others. If you're entering the immediate crime scene and you believe it's a homicide, you should be wearing the proper equipment so that you're not creating more contamination in the area with your own forensic evidence. I will say this, this isn't justifying anything, but based on the fact that it was this huge gym, I'm sure there was some complacency there. There's a lot of people going through, not making an excuse for them, just giving you my perspective on why it probably happened. Not saying it's right, but that's probably what had transpired. Because it's not like a private residence where you know the same five people are in

and out of there. This is like a public gym. There's over 3,000 students and faculty. So I mean, even if you sealed it off and did your very best, there's still going to be so much contamination and so much DNA mixed up in there that you can't even track back to the person. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare as far as forensics are concerned.

I mean, you have less than 24 hours. But considering how many people could have went in that school, that gymnasium from the time Kendrick went missing to the time he was located. Yeah. As you just said, it's an absolute nightmare. And that's only the amount of people that went in a timeframe. But like you said, people have been going in there every single day leading up to this incident. And there's really no way to tell when DNA was, as far as I know, there's no way to tell when DNA was, as far as I know, there's no way to tell the exact time that DNA was deposited on a particular item. So

you could have DNA on the specific mat that Kendrick was found in from a specific person, but that person may have touched that mat a week or two prior because they were the cleaning people that just happened to move it. So yeah, absolute nightmare from a forensic analysis standpoint. Well, here's where things start to get a little sketchy. So this pair of shoes, they're black, gray, and orange Nike sneakers, size nine and a half. In the report, it clearly says that these shoes were found near the bleachers on the north wall of the old gym. And at first glance, it appeared that the sneakers had stains on them that looked like blood. So a blood presumptive test was performed on the shoes by GBI specialist Horn and the stains came back negative for blood. And what is a blood presumptive test? I thought it was just maybe like a luminol or something that you would put on it,

you know, so you don't have to like send it away before you do a more in-depth test. Right. So there's a little chemical test you can do. So we'll go into a crime scene. You might see a little spot, a little black spot, and you don't know if it's blood or if it's paint, or it could be a million different things, dirt. So, you know, cause blood doesn't always look red when you see it a day or two later, it could be black, it could be a lot brown. So what they'll do is they have this little like pad, you put a little, a liquid on it, you rub the presumptive blood that you think you have with this little pad and the pad will change color if it is in fact blood. So yeah, it's just like to make sure like, okay, we don't need to, you know, bag this and send this away to actually have it tested because we know it's not blood.

You got it. And if it comes back positive for blood, then they'll take another, you know, swab, they'll, and now they send it off for DNA analysis. Well, we also have another pair of shoes. So there's two pairs of shoes at play here. There's also black and white Adidas shoes, also in a size nine and a half. And this is, well, first of all, one of the shoes, one of the black and white Adidas shoes was found outside the mat on the ground near the mats. And then the other one was found at the bottom of the mat where KJ's head would have been located. Now, the orange shoes, the orange, gray and white ones, the Nikes, these are the ones that I'm really struggling with because like I said, in Thornton's report, which I read four times because I just wanted to make sure I wasn't reading it wrong.

It clearly says that the orange, orange grain white shoes were found near the bleachers on the north wall but when you look at the crime scene photos it's clear to see that those same shoes appear to be in the mat with kj so his um he's head down in the mat right there's a shoe where he would be where his head would be located uh a different one a black and white adidas one but then there's Adidas one. But then there's two shoes like by his feet in the mat. But in the report,

it says that the shoes were found near the bleachers. So this is one of the main things. I have a big problem with the inconsistencies because what the crime scene photos show don't reflect what's in the report. And you know, you may look at the Johnson family and say like, oh, and I've seen people say this, like, oh, you have no reason to think this is a conspiracy or a cover up. And to some extent, I agree. But when you see things like

this and you're talking about your own child, it's kind of hard to ignore maybe that there might be something going on, that there might be somebody who's not being honest with you. I agree. I will answer that question. Let's take a quick break and we'll get right back at it. Okay. So we're back. And before we took the break, Stephanie had just brought up the fact that in Horn's report, he specifically mentioned these two Nike shoes. They were white and gray with some orange in them. And they were located, according to his report, they were located at the north end of the gym. And we believe that Kendrick's body was found in the mat somewhere in the south region of the gym. So a very different area than Kendrick to put it just to make it very clear. However, Stephanie has looked at the photos. I have looked at the photos. This is a photo I would implore you to go look at as well. We'll put it in for YouTube. Yeah. It's not that graphic at all to look at, but you can clearly see in the photo that there's the rolled up mat. You can see Kendrick's legs. And very clearly in the photo, you can see

two Nike shoes, gray, orange, and white. And there's two shoes in there. And they're kind of wedged in between his calf area. And it doesn't look like this was something that was shoved in there after the fact. So clearly, one, I can see how this would raise some flags for anybody looking at it. And, and I don't have a great answer for it. The only answer I can give is that it was a mistake. Actually, I'm looking further into these pictures. So what I see here is it's showing a, what looks to be like a, a black and orange. So it looks like a black shoe with orange shoelaces. And it says a second shoe at the scene was not collected as evidence.

And this is the shoe is underneath the bleacher. So it's just one shoe. And I can't even tell if it's a Nike. And I do see red spots on it that look like they might be blood, but then they were tested. So this might be the shoe that they found and tested. But at the same time, when you look at the report, it says white, orange and gray Nike shoes. In my opinion,

this is not a white, orange and gray Nike shoe. I don't even know what kind of shoe it would be. And it's just one single shoe. It's not two. Right. And there's no other mention of we know we have the black Adidas shoe that's found at the bottom of the mat, basically where Kendrick's head would be located. And it's believed that's one of his shoes. Yeah, it is his shoe. We know it's his shoe. It's his shoe. So we're not saying these Nike shoes belong to Kendrick.

We're not saying that. But the question is, are those shoes, if it's not the shoes that Horn's talking about, are those shoes, the two extra shoes in the same role? How did they get there? In the same mat? Or are they even mentioned in the report? It looks like he's almost combined the shoes found in the mat and the shoe outside of the mat. They don't even look alike. Right.

Right. And there's really, he might have a better explanation for this, but just from an outside perspective looking in, it sounds like it was a mistake. And again, not condoning it sounds like it was a mistake. And again, not condoning it, but it happens all the time. And I think I've said to you before, the cops are going to make mistakes in these cases. You just hope that it's not detrimental to the investigation. And you hope that it doesn't create more problems for you down the road. And that's why we're sitting here tonight talking about it, right? Because this is clearly something is not filed correctly. Something was not written up correctly in the report because we can clearly see with our own eyes that there are two additional sneakers in

the mat with Kendrick. And yet it doesn't appear that's where Horn noted them being located. They're not across the room thornton thornton oh thornton did it not horn so horn was with the gvi and i believe he he was helping like to test the shoes with the the pre-test but it was thornton who wrote this report yeah right so and that would be him so something is not right there it'd be interesting to compare it to some of the other reports because clearly these sneakers that were located in the mat with Kendrick would be something that would be analyzed extensively because if we're talking about a homicide here, two unknown sneakers, right, not belonging to Kendrick, the question is who do they belong to? How do they get there?

So yeah, that's a little confusing, but again, the reason we're talking about this, you can see understandably how this would be something that would be very troubling to Kendrick's family because you wouldn't expect this type of thing to happen where they're noting a pair of sneakers in one location and there's clearly photos showing them in another. So I can understand their frustration with that. That's a reasonable thing to be upset about. And I mean, I think I have this in there later, but they definitely did tie the black and white Adidas shoes to Kendrick. They were given to him by his eighth grade basketball coach, I believe. So they definitely were his. I can't really find out who those orange, gray and white sneakers belong to. So I'm going to have to look into that a little bit more. I did like search for it for like an hour today,

but I'm going to look into it more. Let's talk about what else they found though. So they also found a yellow folder, a science textbook, and a medium-sized Hollister pullover hoodie. The folder was found in front of a rolled up mat. The science book was found between or behind two rolled up mats. And the sweatshirt was found on the concrete floor near the mats. The folder and the textbook were determined to be KJ's. And in October of 2014, this case was actually presented to the public by Lieutenant Stride Jones, who was one of the lead investigators. He showed surveillance footage of Pipelo the the gym teacher pulling the mats down and apparently you can see the textbook and the folder falling off the top of the mats at this

point and that led to the theory that they'd been placed on top of the mats by KJ himself. Now there was also these blood stains found on the south wall this was about 40 feet from where KJ was found in the mat. These stains were also tested using a presumptive test, and they showed that they were positive for blood. So there were also bloody tissues found in the girl's bathroom, and this girl's bathroom was located near the old gym, and those were taken in as evidence as well. Two swabs were taken from the blood stains on the south wall and entered into evidence. This evidence, according to Thornton, was collected, sealed, and then placed in his crime scene vehicle, which he then locked,

and he had the keys on his purse the whole time. This is probably protocol. Right. Chain of custody. You have to document the entire process of the evidence once it's collected. Yep. Now, I'm going to jump ahead a bit because I think it's important, as we're going through the evidence, to know that within 24 hours, Sheriff Chris Prine had given a press conference and told the media that the body belonged to a student and they were going to be investigating the case as a possible homicide. Four months later, the investigation was finished and it was the belief of law enforcement that KJ had gone into the mat willingly, gotten stuck in there, and then asphyxiated. Now, this does sound like a stretch, right? Because who would go into a gym mat willingly? I've never heard of anything like it before. It's just insane. But then you find out some background about why he may have been going into the mat. So after KJ was found, police began an investigation that involved

interviewing many students and friends of KJ's and people who were in classes with him. And a few different kids told the police that there was a locker fee at this school. So if you wanted to use a locker, you'd have to pay a fee, which I think is so stupid. If you're going to use a locker that your parents' tax money pays for the school, you should be able to just bring in a lock and use whatever locker you need to use. It's insane that they charge for that. In fact, they got two gyms. You can turn the old gym into a locker room, a free locker room. Yeah, there you go. So a lot of kids said some people don't want to pay the locker fee. So what they'll do is they'll keep their gym stuff in these rolled up mats,

kind of like pushed out of sight. And then they would retrieve them when they needed them. Another student told police that he and KJ actually shared those Adidas shoes, the one that was found in the mat at the bottom where KJ's head was. And he said, quote, me and KJ had third block gym together in Coach Davis's class. At the beginning of class, I would always wait for the coach to call roll. Then I'd go get me and Kendrick's basketball shoes. I would tilt the mats over and get the shoes from the bottom. I never got into the mat, end quote. And this would usually work out pretty fine for them, right? It had been a system that they'd had. So whenever KJ had his class and he needed the shoes, he would go in and get the

shoes. And then this other student would get the shoes. It was sort of a shared shoe system. But over Christmas break, the mats had all been moved to the corner and more mats had been brought in and placed in front of the old mats, which meant that if KJ had come into the old gym to get his shoes, they're all in different places and he would have known which mat his shoes were in. So the theory is that he used the bleachers to get to the top of the mats and then he walked along the top of the mats until he found the one that contained his shoes. At this point, he realized that he was blocked in. He couldn't get the mat down like the other kids said, I would just tip the mat over and get the shoes. He couldn't do that because the mat was blocked in on both sides

and in front and the wall in the back. So what he did is he climbs up, he puts his folder and his textbook down on the top of the mats, and he kind of gets down on his hands and knees and reaches into the mat to get his shoes. But these mats are a little over six feet tall, so he's not going to be able to just reach down with his arms. He's going to have to sort of like wriggle himself into the mat. So he does this. He sort of shoves himself into the mat, wriggles down until he can reach them. And this is what causes him to become stuck. And due to how small the mat opening was, it's just 14 inches. And I believe that his shoulders were 19 or 17 inches. So his shoulders were definitely wider than this

mat opening. It's also important to note for anyone who doesn't know, Kendrick was approximately five feet, 10 inches tall and 160 pounds. So if you're wondering, you know, Stephanie said it earlier in the episode, these mats were about six feet, you know, as far as height. So is it reasonable for Kendrick to assume that, you know, if this is the theory, if this is true, I can reach down in there and pull myself back out with one hand after I do it. He's definitely over six feet when he puts his arm over his head. So it is reasonable to assume that he could have thought it was possible for him to do that. But the mat opening was so small, 14 inches, right? He's got broader shoulders. So what he can do is he can sort of like put his hands in front of himself

like this. And you guys can't see me on the podcast, but you can on YouTube. And this makes my shoulders obviously much less broad when I do this. I can put my hands down in front of me and I can wriggle in, but now how do I get back up? Right. Yeah. I don't, I'm claustrophobic. So just even the thought of it is like, it bothers me. Like I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about it and just the thought of, even if I could get back out, no, I'm good, man. There's a, my brother's a quick story. My brother's a firefighter and I, everyone always tells me, tells me I took the wrong test and I'm like, I, you know, I should have been a firefighter. It's pretty cool job. You know, they get cook on a grill and play basketball all day. That's a shout out to the firefighters. But my brother told me about one of the things he

had to do, which is put on your equipment and you have to crawl through this like simulated, like space with your equipment on. And it's like a box that they make. And it's just, you just got to crawl from one side to the other, but it's like super tight. And he's like, he made it seem like, Oh, it was, it was honestly probably the easiest part of the test. And I was like, nah, failing. He's like, what? He's like, do you? I'm like, yeah, nope. Couldn't do it. I'm past. He's like, Oh, but they can open it up if you get stuck. I'm like, nope, no, no, no, no, not doing it. So yeah, this, this is this, this, this, this situation definitely. Don't like it. I'm incredibly claustrophobic. I don't like it at all. I know, I know exactly why I'm claustrophobic. It's a long story that involves my brother actually holding me under a blanket when I

was a child and not letting me out. But yes, you know, older brothers, but small spaces, even being in a closet sometimes, you know, with the door closed, like a pantry closet, I'll, I'll feel very, so this is just, Oh, I can't even imagine. And he was, he was young. He was strong. He was athletic, but in a certain position, in a certain position, it's going to be difficult. You know, gravity's working against you at this point. Yeah. So if this is what had in fact happened, he definitely underestimated how small of a space it was and how much strength it would be. It would take based on his leverage, his lack of leverage to pull himself back out. But, you know, if we were to believe this happened, you wouldn't know that until after

you're already in that situation. All right. So this is the law enforcement's explanation for this. KJ goes in to get his shoes. He gets stuck upside down, can't get himself out. And it's just this tragic accident. But KJ's family, they never believed this. They never bought into it, especially as soon as the investigation ended and they were like accident. KJ's family immediately said something's going on here. And this is when they believed, you know, that he'd been murdered and some massive multi-agency cover-up had gone down. So there is surveillance video of KJ in the school the day he died. And this was January 10th. So remember, his body's

found on the 11th. He goes in on January 10th. They see him entering the school at 8.33 a.m. He's wearing a white shirt, an orange undershirt, jeans, and white tennis shoes. He's seen on camera again around 1 p.m. wearing the same clothes entering the old gym. Many people who believe KJ was murdered have also seen the video since a lot of it's been made public. CNN got it, you know, fairly early on and they were blasting it on their 24 news cycle, 24 hour news cycle. And these people and, you know, others who are watching this and trying to find something suspicious about it, they point to the speed with which KJ seemed to be walking, almost seemed to be running. So people were like, well, what's he running from? Is he being pursued? Is somebody trying to get him?

Well, it turned out during the investigation that the police had discovered KJ was no longer playing for the school football team. He'd left the team and he'd been told that if he could get his grades up and work on his attendance, that he could come back to the football team. So, you know, he's obviously at this point, they think that he was walking or running at a fast pace because he wants to grab his shoes because he wants to make it to his weightlifting class, which is the next class he has. He wants to make it there on time because he's supposed to be working on his attendance and he loves football. So he obviously wants to get back on the football team. So that's basically the Cliff Notes version of the police investigation, you know, and we're going to go over the rest of the physical evidence. We're going to discuss the issues with the investigation and this determination that it was an accident and this sort of cover-up or conspiracy that's been brought up by the Johnson family and their supporters. But we're going to do that when we get back from a break.

All right, so we're back, and here's where things get a little more muddy. The county coroner, his name's Bill Watson, and he arrived at the scene around 4 p.m. So this is six hours after KJ's body's been found. And this detail has reinforced the idea that some people have, which is that KJ was murdered and the crime was covered up. Now, it's apparently protocol. It's like the law, right, in Georgia to call the coroner as soon as the police discover they have a dead body on their hands. But this was clearly not done. The coroner, Bill Watson, he later made a statement expressing his displeasure with the amount of time it took before he was notified, saying, quote, I was not notified in this death until 1545 hours. The investigative climate was very poor to worse when I arrived on the scene. The body had

been noticeably moved. The scene had been compromised and there was no cooperation from law enforcement at the scene, end quote. So the sheriff's office didn't immediately respond to this because CNN was all over Bill Watson. They were flashing his quotes all over and following that, they said the sheriff's office has not responded to this. But later, Sheriff Pryne said that even though it was a protocol in the law to call the coroner immediately, this investigation had been handled like all others in the past. He stated, quote, the coroner was contacted once investigators had worked we know that's the law, but that's not how we do things here. And essentially, he's also saying that the coroner can't really enter the crime scene until the police have finished processing it. And then it's the coroner's job to come in and, you know, look at the body.

So he was like kind of basically doing him a favor, like why wait here when you can wait at home or at work because you're going to have to wait either way. And then we'll call you when it's your turn to step in and do your job. And what do you make of this from your experience in law enforcement? You know, I also wondered if Bill Watson had thought that the body had been moved due to the mat that KJ was in being taken down because the police say, you know, we did not touch the body. But obviously, KJ's body was moved from its original position, but not by the police necessarily. So, you know, I don't know what he's thinking. He never really explicitly says like why the crime scene was a mess or what did he say, poor to very worse or something. He never really exactly says what's wrong with the crime scene.

Well, first off, for anybody who believes this was a conspiracy, family, whoever, even people listening or watching this right now, that statement right there supports everything they believe. It's a very damning statement to have someone who's part of the process say, I wasn't called on time, the body had been moved, and the scene was in very poor condition. I mean, that's coming from the horse's mouth. And he's someone who- He's supposed to be on their side, right? Supposed to be on their side. So at the end of the day, if you're someone from the outside looking at that, whether you're in belief it was an accident or belief it was a homicide,

that's not good, right? So that's number one. So I can see again, as we're trying to understand why Kendrick's family feels the way they do is why many of their supporters feel the way they do. You can't help but see where they're coming from when you read something like that. They didn't put those words in that man's mouth. He said them. That's one. As far as how we would do it, there is a lot of truth to what the sheriff's saying. Yes, there is a body there, but the body is one piece of evidence in a crime scene. So everything else around it, before you start letting outside entities come in, including

the medical examiner's office, would be taken care of first. The processing of the shoes, the processing of the blood on the wall, the tissues in the bathroom, photos, all the other areas that they tested for blood as well that came back negative. All of these outside factors would be taken care of before the body was ready to be examined. So if the medical examiner showed up and Kendrick was still in the mat, then I believe that you're correct in saying, yes, the body had been moved down to the floor by someone prior to police. But I would really like to know if he meant that Kendrick was removed from the mat prior to him getting there. And I don't think that was the case. That doesn't sound like it was the case. It sounds like when

the medical examiner arrived to remove, examine the body, Kendrick was still rolled up in the mat. If that was the case, I believe the sheriff, I believe that they didn't touch the body. And so that's what we would do if in Rhode Island, what we would do is process the surrounding area, make sure that all evidence was collected, analyzed, and or documented, and then allow an outside entity to come in, add them to the crime scene list. But now everything else around it has already been collected and preserved. We're not worried about contamination. Now we can move on to the body where the examiner and the detectives would be present as that body

is examined so that both sides can make notes as far as their observations. And I do remember from another case I've covered, the Austin Yogurt Shop murders. I'm not sure if this is true, and you can let me know with your experience. But the detectives in that case, they were so upset when the medical examiner got there because they said, you know, sometimes the coroner almost like rushes them because obviously he doesn't want to wait around all day and they want to do like this thorough investigation. But when he gets there, he obviously wants to get right to his job. So he kind of like hovers over them and backseat drives a little bit. He's like, you guys done yet? You guys done yet? So that may be because it's true.

You know, if he had been called earlier, six hours earlier, he would have been sitting at that school, not able to even enter that gym for six hours. So that may be the way they do things. But he did not make it seem that way. He made it seem like this was out of the ordinary. So I'm not sure who to believe at this point. I'll give you another angle. And this is something that I think we can all understand, right?

Whether you're in investigations or not, the detectives are there. They're concerned about the body, but also everything else around it because that's their playground. That's their evidence. And they don't want you or anybody else coming in there is concerned about the body. And he wants to be there or she wants to be there because they don't want the detectives screwing that up for them. So it's like, hey, I want to get in there because I don't want one of you dummies, if you do something wrong, contaminating my body, contaminating my crime scene, which is the immediate body. And adversely, the detectives are like, hey, well, we don't want you in here because you're just stepping into my crime scene, screwing us up. So it's a lot of push and pull. And that's not just specific to Georgia. That's all around the country. So yeah. So that is a

real thing that happens all the time. And it's a little annoying because it seems like there's some ego in there too. And it's like, I feel like you'd be more productive if you guys work together and you were on the same page. You're both supposedly fighting the same fight, trying to figure out what happened here. Why don't you just go easy on each other a little bit? And I will come to the defense a little bit and say, I'm saying this because it does happen. But again, I can only speak from my experiences, which are limited in the grand scheme of how many of these cases take place every single day. But in my experience, we always worked well together. But again, I was in Rhode Island. I knew the guys by name. There was only like three or four crime scene investigators that

would come out. We knew them all. So there's a very cohesive, good working relationship. Georgia, it's probably a little different. You maybe not know every guy. But yes, you would always hope it's a perfect scenario, but you're right. Human intervention comes into it, right? There's the egos and personalities. And did you have a bad day that day? Are you hungry? Did you get woken up out of your sleep?

There's all these human variables that come into it that unfortunately play a factor. You wish they didn't, But it's a realization that we have to acknowledge. Well, when when Watson found Kendrick, he was laying on his left side, partially sticking out of the mat from the abdomen up. His head was in a pool of blood. His right arm appeared to be covering his face. His left arm was along the side of his body with the forearm slightly bent towards his head. So kind of like this. It's slightly bent like this going upwards. And the fingers on both of his hands were curled. There was a pair of white earphones with a black wire and these

earphones were hooked around his left hand at the middle and index finger. Like I said, his face was swollen beyond recognition. There was blood coming out of his nose, his mouth, his eyes. His eyes were swollen. There was burst blood vessels. There was also dried blood visible on his face, his arms, and his chest. And like I said, that second black and white Adidas shoe was found in the puddle of blood where his head would have been in the mat when it was standing upright. And remember, the match to it, its pair, its brother shoe, had been found outside of the mat. And I don't understand how this happened.

You know, like, were both the shoes down there? Maybe he came in and he found that only one shoe was out, and maybe it had been, like, knocked out when they put the mats up, but only one shoe was left in. Did he get down there, get one shoe out, throw it out, and then not able to get the other shoe? This has always been something that's struck me as odd. Let's hit that real quick because you just brought up the scenarios that ran through my head. One, I don't think he went down there and threw the shoe out because you laid it out really great. 14 inches, 19 inches. There's no

way he was able to throw that shoe out behind him. Not possible. I think the only scenario, and I think this is another reason why people question this so much is, well, you laid out this whole scenario about how him and his friend shared the sneakers. So you would assume that both sneakers were stored in whatever mat that had been kind of blocked in by the other mats. And, you know, I think most of us would assume that both shoes would be in there. So how did he get the other shoe out? The only, there's two scenarios I think of one, the more plausible one is the one you just said that as they move the mats around one shoe got loose and it was, you know, laying in a different spot, or is it possible that there were two shoes and because it was so tight, he was able to go

down and get one, come all the way out, throw it on the ground and go back down for a second one. It's possible. I don't, I don't see how that would happen, but I can't rule it out. I don't think, can you, I mean, I think that's, it's a possible scenario, but I think that's another reason why, you know, people are questioning this. It's like, oh, you're saying the theory is he went down to get his sneakers. Well, how'd one get out then?

Right. We just don't know. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like the theory makes sense. But when you have these other variables, like the pair of shoes that were on top of him, the one shoe being out, you know, these shoes, it just it doesn't completely make sense. And you really can't explain why that happened and there's surveillance footage in the gym right four cameras in the gym but they just so happen

to not really you know have be out of view the mats that he went into they're they're out of view another thing that's that's odd is his he's wearing jeans right and they are unbuckled and unzipped and then his front pockets were partially pulled out. And in his front left pocket, there was an LG cell phone found. So this is weird because it's like, how did his pants get unbuckled and unzipped? Did he do that like as he was going because he knew he was going to change for weight training class? Did he do it because he was trying to get to that cell phone to call for help? Now, it turns out this cell phone, it didn't even really necessarily belong to KJ. I think I read somewhere

it was his cousin's phone and the cousin wasn't even sure how he'd gotten the phone, but it didn't seem to have service on it. So the last activity on that phone was December 27th. And so people just assumed that KJ was using this to listen to music, like kind of hook it up to the school Wi-Fi and listen to music. So I wonder if he could have reached it, if that's what he was trying to reach, but I can't imagine how he would even wiggle around in there to get the cell phone out. And then if he did get it out, how would he even get it to his face? Oh, I'm really stressed out thinking about it. Like I feel so bad for him because no, that's a, I mean, my greatest fear is being buried alive. And I feel like this is essentially what happened to KJ. Yeah. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, uh, weighing in on the pants being

unbuttoned because frankly, I don't have an answer for it. I don't know. I don't know why they would be unbuttoned. I don't know why the pockets would be slightly unpauled, uh, pulled out of the pocket itself. I, I just don't, I don't know why the pockets would be slightly pulled out of the pocket itself. I just don't know the answer. And it's unexplainable to me. And again, it just adds to the reason why we're covering it, because there's these questions. Yeah. Well, there's also two autopsies in this case, and we're going to get to the second one later. But in the first autopsy, there lists a few injuries on him. They said there was a one-eighth by one-eighth inch superficial abrasion on his right wrist. And then on the fourth finger of his left hand, there were two superficial abrasions, also measuring one-eighth

by one-eighth. But this report claims that there was no other injuries, you know, besides obviously the horrific things that happen to a body when it's been hanging upside down for almost 24 hours. Decomposition, yeah. The autopsy was performed on January 14th by Dr. Kraft at the GBI lab in Macon, and this is the lab that performs autopsies for the state's medical examiner's office. Now, Dr. Kraft told the sheriff's office after her initial autopsy, quote, I'm not sure at this point what he died from, but I can tell you what he did not die from. He had not been beaten. He had not been stabbed. He had not been shot. He had not been sexually assaulted or anything such as that, end quote. And in the end, the cause of death was ruled as positional asphyxia. And this

occurs when someone's position prevents them from breathing. Now, many people online, as well as media outlets, have pointed to the fact that one of the shoes KJ was supposed to be retrieving was found at the bottom of the mat by his head, and this is also where a puddle of blood is found because he's hanging upside down and the blood rushes to your head. And it eventually builds up to such a point where it just starts coming out of all the orifices on your face, your nose, your mouth. So this is where this blood came from. It's just absolutely horrific. But then they said it was reported by CNN. There's no blood on this shoe. That's how CNN reported it. How could this shoe

have possibly been there? There's no blood found on it. And like I said, these shoes were proven to belong to KJ, given to him by his eighth grade basketball coach. So Lieutenant Stride Jones, who's actually the one that presented this case to the public, I believe in 2014, he said, no, there was blood on the shoe. And he showed a picture and he said it's on the back line and on the shoelaces. So yes, this shoe had blood on the shoe and he showed a picture and he said it's on the on the back line and on the shoelaces so yes this this shoe had blood on it i i would expect to see a little bit more blood though i guess i don't know see once again you know i've seen the picture of the shoe there does appear to be some blood on it but if it was down there and he was bleeding from his face while the shoe was down there you'd expect to see some more blood on it, I guess. Yeah. It's weird how some crime scenes I walk into and you've seen it some way a certain amount of times. Every time you go in there, you see whether it's a natural cause for the death or whatever, and you've seen it the same way over and over, but then you'll get a curveball through a natural way. It's like, hmm, that's a little bit out of place. But I will say about the autopsy report, when you have the autopsy report, there's cause of death and manner of death.

They're two different things. And so she's basically saying, hey, listen, he wasn't stabbed, beaten, shot, anything like that. But she's not saying it wasn't a homicide, right? She's not saying that he wasn't killed by another because the reality, he died from asphyxia, but the manner in which he, how he got there, um, as yet that's not her job to determine. So, you know, just one, one possibility is that, Hey, was he pushed down there?

Was he thrown down there? Right. If that's the case, then it's still a homicide, but she's just, she's ruling out some of the possibilities. And I'm sure her the reason why doing that was to kind of alleviate some of the skepticism around it. But it probably just created more. I don't think initially it created more suspicion because, I mean, that's not all she said in the report. She also said there was no other visible wounds. Right. And then later, Kendrick's family gets their own independent autopsy done. And the person who does that

has some different things to say and says that Kendrick suffered from blunt force trauma to his neck. So now when that second autopsy comes out, now it looks like, well, how did you miss that? How did you miss that he had this blunt force trauma or some blow to the neck? And she's saying and she stuck to it. She was like, I did not see that in the autopsy. So it's like who's telling the truth, who missed something, who messed up, who's maybe painting a narrative to fit a certain theory that they want to pursue. Who knows? But like you said, human error, when you have all these different entities, all these different people mixed up and everybody's

trying to kind of look out for themselves and make sure that if something does go wrong, the finger's not pointed at them, you're going to get a lot of this shuffling of responsibility. Yeah. I can't tell you. It's the story of my life, guys. Everyone who's watching this can see my face. Autopsy reports have been my biggest asset and also my biggest curse because it is a science. Yes, it's a science, but it's very subjective. The medical field, how doctors view certain things, their reasoning behind why it occurred. They can try to be as unbiased as they want, but their own personal opinions, whether it's, it could be even just their personal, you know, their positions on, you know,

from a science perspective, but it could also be outside influences. What's their political belief, all these different variables, they're human, just like all of us. And I have personally seen this numerous times where two different doctors looking at the same body come to completely different opinions with supported science behind their opinions. With supported science behind both opinions. Yeah. It's insane. I've seen it a lot. And you're like, you don't know what to think. They're supposed to be the ones to tell you, right? They're supposed to tell you what to think. And now you've got two reputable doctors who have degrees and have experience, and they are looking at the same thing and seeing two different things. And you're stuck here in the middle as a layman being like, well, so which one is it? Yeah, they both sound reasonable. I won't

say names, but there's prominent pathologists out there who make a living coming in to second guess and relook at autopsies that were done by other medical examiners. And they're very well established and very well off financially. And that's all they do is just serve as expert pathologists throughout the country. So, yeah, the autopsy reports have been used as a tool by both sides. In many cases, you can have the same case from a prosecutor and a defense team use two different pathologists to support their theory, right. On the same body, but it's, it's crazy. And it's, it's kept me up many nights researching these reports, not being a doctor, trying to figure out how the science

works behind it. But to everyone listening, when you hear it's not like DNA, autopsy report is an autopsy report and it is science, but just understand there's a huge margin for human interpretation. I'll say that. I agree. I think interpretation is exactly the right way to say it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that either person is trying to, you know, maybe twist it one way or the other, but yeah. They're both usually acting in good faith. That's just their opinion. Well, let's talk about January 10th, right? The day that KJ goes into the map, because we have, like we said, some surveillance footage of him walking into the gym. And what I couldn't believe, because I initially, when I read about this case, I thought he walked into an empty gym, right? But this is not the case at all. When he walks into the gym, you can see, I think, four or five students, they're playing basketball. He runs by them. You

see him kind of come into the gym and then he disappears off the lower corner of the gym. And that's all we see of him at that point. Like I said, that a student was seen entering around the same time right before him, but that student kept walking, going in a different direction. And it's also been reported that within 10 or 15 minutes of KJ being seen on surveillance and, you know, allegedly what we think happening, him going into the mat, the color guard team, the girls color guard team entered the gym for practice. And so obviously questions were asked about why no one would have heard KJ calling for help. Now, according to the police report

and the statement from the girls color guard coach, they did practice in the gym that night, but it was later. They got there around 645 and they left around eight. And so that's not exactly what happened. I believe the basketball team also practiced in there that day. But even if we don't have these teams coming in, you know, within minutes of him going in, we have people in the gym at this point who are already in there when he's supposedly going into the mat, because if he's rushing to get to his class, like the police believe, he's not going to be hanging out in the gym, shooting the shit for 10, 15 minutes before he goes into the mat. He's going right in.

And I just don't understand how they didn't see it happening. I guess all of these kids. Or hear him yelling, like you said. I can understand more why they didn't hear him yelling. Because it's a pretty big gym. It's a pretty big gym. He's in that far back corner. And once he goes in the mats, not only is he inside of a mat, but he's inside of

a mat that's surrounded by a crap ton of other mats. So if he's yelling, it may not have been heard. And you know how loud and echoey gyms get, like the sounds of sneakers squeaking on the floor and the basketball hitting the gym and it just echoing everywhere, but not see him climbing up. Did nobody see it? It looks like they interviewed these students and everybody said no one saw anything. No one actually saw him enter that mat. So we don't have it on surveillance and we don't have witnesses seeing him enter the mat, even though it appears that he entered the gym when there was several other students already there. Yeah. There's a couple of things you can take from that as well, depending on what camp you're in.

If you're in the camp that you believe this was an accident, everything you just laid out, right? Nobody heard it. Nobody saw it. Crazy to think that that was the case. On the other hand, if you believe this was a homicide and you don't believe that one of these individuals who was in there prior to him playing basketball was involved with the homicide, if there was some type of, even if it was not intended to be a homicide, but he was being bullied or picked on or assaulted and he was thrown into the mats or anything like that, or there was some type of assault happening off camera before he was then placed in the mats, you would expect that someone who was in the gym would have seen or heard this as well. So both theories struggle with the idea that there were people in there prior to him entering off camera, but definitely in there. Yeah. And it doesn't seem as if the Johnson family has pointed a finger at any of these students that were in the gym upon his entry.

Right. Somebody different. Right, exactly. They're witnesses. Right, so it's just, it's very confusing. And like I said, there's about 40 cameras in the school. There's four of them in the gym and these are motion activated cameras. So they're not recording unless they sense motion and then they stay recording until there is no motion and then they don't record anymore.

But if there wasn't already enough suspicious and mysterious aspects to the case, we've got some problems with the surveillance footage. It seems like some of the timestamps are off. There's also missing footage. You know, it'll just jump in time. The parents of Kendrick who viewed this footage, and many other people, they had like a professional guy from like the FBI. I think he was retired from the FBI. He came in and he's like, yeah, it's weird because you'll just see like somebody in the gym and then all of a sudden they'll disappear and they'll be like completely new people there. So there's definitely something going on with the surveillance. And we're going to get into that in the next part because that is part of why the Johnsons feel that this is some cover up. But let's talk about the blood, the blood found on the wall and the blood found in the garbage can of the girls bathroom on the tissues. So the blood on the wall was determined to not belong to KJ. But many people were like, OK, it doesn't belong to him. Whose blood is it? Like, we need to know whose blood this is.

And when the police were like, well, we don't know whose blood it is. There was more reinforcement for the coverup theory. Like you're not going to, you know, there's blood splattered on the wall of this gym within 40 feet of a young man who just died. And you don't think that this is connected. You don't think that this is suspicious. And, you know, I mean, the police gave a reason for why they didn't pursue this, which I think is actually really reasonable. They said, you know, there's over 3,000 students and faculty members here, right? So in order to figure out who this blood belongs to, we would have to DNA test all of these people. So not only is that going to take forever, it's going to be expensive. And a lot of these students are minors.

So they're going to have to get consent from the student's parents. There's privacy concerns here. Like if you're just a kid at this school and all of a sudden the police are like knocking at your door and they want to, you know, swab the inside cheek of your 16 year old daughter and get her DNA for like a murder investigation or a death investigation, you might be like, listen, my daughter wasn't even anywhere near this gem. And she wasn't even, you know, on the scene. So, no, I'm not going to do that. So you've got issues.

So in order to pinpoint exactly who that blood belonged to and on top of that, right, this is the gym. So what happens in gyms? Games, sports games. So you could have that blood be from somebody from a different school's team who was there for an away game and they got like a bloody nose or something, or even somebody who was just from the community sitting in the bleachers watching a game. You know, maybe something happened that they hurt themselves and they just kind of wiped the blood on the wall. And to me, the blood doesn't look super fresh. And there's pictures. It looks kind of rusty brown. It's not bright red. So I feel like it, I feel like it had probably been there for a while. But then when you say that, there's some people who say, well, like what kind of school doesn't

wipe blood off the walls? Well, once again, this was the old gym. You know, I can tell you that my school, my high school wasn't too, wasn't too on top of like cleaning the walls and stuff. Like I said, maybe once or twice a year, they'd bring in crews to clean the floors and stuff and repolish them especially if it's the gym and you're playing basketball and stuff but uh they're not over here scrubbing the walls and this wall happened to be like in the back corner kind of between the bleachers and stuff so uh that that makes sense that they wouldn't they wouldn't really be able to find out who it belonged to because you can

you imagine how long it would take to run that many dna samples through the system like there's already backlogs and even let's say for a second that they did let's say for a second that they expended you know they use every source available every single person who had agreed to be at that game or who had ever been in that gym and they found the person. There's a very high likelihood that that person wasn't at the gym the day before or after this incident took place. And so now you wasted all that time and money just to find out that it was a bloody mouth or a bloody knee or a bloody nose. I think the blood would have been more important for the investigators if it came back to Kendrick. And the reason being is pretty obvious.

Then it would show that there was an assault that had taken place prior to him being in the mat. Or a potential assault, you know, because I mean, yeah, a potential assault. But it's definitely like there was no blood found from Kendrick outside of that mat. Exactly. So whatever took place happened immediately in that area. And it kind of supports the theory they're going with. So that all said, we understand why, and I think we agree with it, and we understand the importance of it if it was Kendrick's. I will say this, okay? This one thing, the one blood on the opposite side of the wall,

you might be like, ah, it's unreasonable to have them do that. But again, just looking at it from Kendrick's family, we've already mentioned like five or six different things that just don't sound right. So anybody listening to this, including the guy who's a former law enforcement, I see where they're coming from because it's not just one thing. It's not just one red herring. It's a bunch of things. And after where there's smoke, there's fire, right?

So you already have the notion that they don't want to believe their son was killed this horrific way up by an accident. You had that natural emotion, which I think we would all feel. But then on top of it, you have these things that are popping up from people saying the crime scene wasn't done correctly. And there's blood on the opposite wall. And there's this unknown pair of sneakers. And just, you know, the video surveillance is skipping. Take into consideration all these things as you're looking at it through their lens. And I don't think it's hard to understand why they are coming at it from the angle they're

coming at it. It's completely justifiable, in my opinion. Yeah. And I mean, as soon as you find out that any mistake was made in the investigation of your child's death, you're going to be like, wait, what the hell? Like my kid deserves to have this investigation done correctly. And I've already seen several places where you haven't done that. So now I'm just suspicious of you in general. I don't trust you in general. And I don't feel like you have my family's best interests at heart. I can understand that.

And one other thing that we haven't spoken about, which is something that we should, which is the fact that there's a social issue to this as well, right? We have a black victim in a southern state and you have a lot of white police officers looking into the case. So we know historically there's already an issue there, right? There's a mistrust between many people who are black and law enforcement. And there's a lot of historical data to support that, right? Yes. This area, it's far south. Florida, Georgia line, like I said, historically

has had an issue with racism and segregation. They've also historically had a hard time letting go of racism and segregation as the world became more modern and, you know, kind of realized that those things were not good. There's been a lot of instances of this in that area. So it is understandable. And the Johnson family, they've always felt, at least I believe since the investigation came back to say it was an accident, they have felt that this is because Kendrick was Black. And they said, if this was a white boy, this is not the conclusion you would have come to. If this is a white boy, you would have pursued it and you would have gone down every avenue and you would have done things correctly and you would have called the coroner and et cetera, et cetera. So yes, that's definitely at the heart

of this. Yeah. Yeah. There's a foundational mistrust, right? Before the case even starts just between law enforcement and the black community. And so then you add in these things that we've talked about in this specific case, and it doesn't start off good. It's not on the right foot because you really got to be on your A game because again, you have a family, understandably so, who doesn't trust you going into it. And then you add in the fact, like you said, it's predominantly white. You have this black student who's found dead in the gym and nobody really has a clear answer as to what happened. And not only a clear answer, but supportive data that would make it obvious that that's what transpired. There's so many outliers, so many things that can't be explained that really bring into question the motives of the police department from the perspective of Kendrick's family. So there's some cases where I look at and go, come on, it's obvious. This is what happened. This is something where there's a lot of things that just don't make complete sense. And so you can understand where they're coming

from. And I think that's why this case has gained so much national attention because of the same things that you and I are laying out tonight. do our best, right? They sealed off everything. They brought in a ton of people. They interviewed a lot of people. I mean, I read this police report. It's many pages. They interviewed a lot, a lot of people. So they probably thought, oh, we're going to do this so that there's no, we're behaving above reproach, right? But at the same time, you've got this small police department. They're used to doing things the way they do them. Like the sheriff said, you know, this is the way we investigate every case. We never call the coroner right away, et cetera, et cetera. And so you've got that we're stuck in our ways kind of thing as well. So is it the we're stuck in our ways or did they purposely mess up this investigation is kind of the question here. Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, like I And like I said, it definitely wasn't perfect.

That's for sure. Definitely wasn't. Yeah. So this isn't one of the ones that are going to be put in the future crime investigative textbooks. They won't be in there. This one's not going to make that one. Not for a good reason. Yeah. Not for a good reason. So we also have the blood found on the tissues in the girls' room. They took that in for testing. And the blood was quickly traced to a student who was on the color guard team. And she told police that on the evening of the 10th during practice in the old gym, she'd gotten hit in the face by one of the color guard poles, which that would probably hurt so bad. And so she had a bloody nose. She had to go to the bathroom to clean up.

And the police didn't just take her word for it. You know, they weren't like, OK, that's your blood. Case closed. They did still send the blood off for DNA testing and it came back confirmed as to belonging to the student. But something KJ's family really had trouble understanding was why none of the students in the gym after he went into the mat heard him calling for help or saw him. And we have talked about this a little bit. The mats are just over six feet tall when standing upright. KJ was 5'10", so it would make sense that some of his body would be sticking out from the top of the mat, especially if he wasn't down

there all the way. But we don't know. Did he make it down there all the way? Is that why he got a shoe and got it back up? We don't really know. But the explanation for this seems to be twofold. So it can be dangerous and even deadly to have your body in an upside down position for too long because blood begins pulling in the head. Now, in 2009, there was a man in Utah named John Jones. And this is so sad, by the way, if you will have time to look into it, guys, you should, but it's very, very sad. So he got stuck upside down in a cave and he remained that way for 28 hours as rescue workers tried to get him free. So he's up. They couldn't get him out pretty much. At some point during the rescue efforts, they realized they couldn't get him out and they

had to bring his family to say goodbye to him. They just knew that he was going to die. And he just had to sit there and die like that, which is an awful way to go. And then, you know, he eventually did die, most likely from asphyxiation. Now, there's a reason that the human body has evolved with our lungs positioned at the top of our other organs, right? The website, How Stuff Works, I read it and I also read some other medical website, but basically the lungs are delicate organs and it doesn't take long for them to be squished by bigger and heavier organs like the liver and the intestines. And, you know,

usually the liver and the intestines are underneath your lungs, so they're not going to cause any problems. But when your head is directly underneath your feet, you know, upright like he was, your lungs can't absorb enough oxygen with a limited amount of space that they now have to function because the organs are pressing down and pushing on the lungs. The lungs are supposed to be flexible so you can take air in and out. So they're easily pressed and compressed. The lungs aren't the only thing that's cause for concern when you're in this position, though. And it's true that our bodies are designed to move blood around while we're standing upright because human beings, we walk upright. There's never a time really when you as a human being are going to be hanging upside down for any long amount of time. And our bodies are made like that to prevent blood from

pooling at the bottom, you know, at our feet, because gravity is going to pull that down. So we have a circulatory system that prevents that from happening. Now we can see from this previous example of John Jones in Utah, it took him, I think, 27 or 28 hours to die from this. But when you add in this very tight space that KJ was in, you know, aka the inside of a gym mat that wasn't even big enough for him to put his shoulders through to begin with, as well as the positioning of his arms because one arm was like over his face. So it's like pushed down in front of him. So now you're making it even smaller because your arm is in front of you. If he went into that, you know, so it's basically like it's a combination of the blood pulling into his head, causing pressure, as well as him just being basically like anacondad by this this gym mat.

So if he went into the mat alive, as the police believe, he may have only been conscious for roughly 10 minutes before passing out, meaning that he would not have been calling for help. Or if he was calling for help initially, his cries would have been muffled. Maybe he was getting weaker as he came closer to losing consciousness. And like I said, honestly, even if he had called out, it's a large gym. There's lots of stuff going on. There's echoing. He's in like this soundproof mat box thing. It may just have been impossible for him to get somebody's attention.

You know, it's something I was really thinking about too, because again, I hate to put myself in a situation. It's my biggest nightmare, right? But I was also, and again, not a psychologist, but I know if I was in high school, high school students are really brutal. They really don't let anything go, right? And you don't ever want to be embarrassed by your peers. So I also thought about if it were me and I was stuck inside this mat and I'm thinking, oh my God, this is so embarrassing. I got stuck in here. I think I can get myself out. And you're really, really trying and you're not realizing that your oxygen levels are

going down and down. There may have been a point where he actually just passed out while he was struggling to get out. And maybe he didn't yell out because he was like, this is going to be, I'm never going to live this down. But I think I can get myself out. He's on the football team. He doesn't want to be that person. So could that have played into maybe why he didn't yell out for them? Again, I'm totally speculating. I never even thought about that, but it's possible. And he may have even been gradually sort of inching himself up, but he just couldn't do it quick enough before the lack of oxygen and the blood going to his head just made him lose consciousness.

Yeah, exactly. And then at that point. I've been knocked out before doing different things. It comes on quick. All of a sudden you're there and then the lights go out. It's very, it's very quick. You don't know it's coming. So, um, and when you do know it's coming, it's, it's too late to start yelling out. Yeah. I never thought about that. It's a really good point. Um, so I, I wanted that to kind of be our question for this week. Do you, do you guys out there think that if this was an accident,

do you think that KJ did try to call out for help, but nobody could hear him? Or do you think he was just kind of like, let me get myself out of this because this is high school and they're going to take pictures and they're going to go up on social media and they're never going to let me live this down. So you're going to be Matt boy. You're going to be going to have. Exactly. I can see the, you know, the pictures now. Yeah. Yeah.

Fuck high school. I'm so glad I'm done with it. I'm so over it. I can't take it. But definitely we want to hear your opinion on that. Cause that's a great, what would be the reasoning behind it? Cause it does seem odd to think, I know the sound isolation. I know the bouncing of the balls, the squeaking of the feet. I know what you're saying. I know it was a big gym. I still find it hard to believe that if he was yelling out, there wouldn't have been a moment in that, you know, five or 10 minutes where these kids would have been, you know, picked up the ball for a second and stopped dribbling and you wouldn't have

heard a muffled. I don't really find it hard to believe. I mean, because this was right before classes, too. So, you know, I don't know this because, like I said, the surveillance footage is pretty much very unreliable. But this was before classes. So maybe those kids were just playing basketball for a couple minutes and then they were out because they had to go to their next class. So they might not even have been in there when he's calling for help. Right. If he was.

If he was. Yeah, it's a great question. And his head's down at the end of the mat. So not only do you have the mats around you, but there's a concrete floor directly underneath you. Where's the sound going to go? I wonder if they tested it. It wouldn't have been a bad experiment for law enforcement to do to basically- No, it would not have been. It would not have been. You're saying it wouldn't have been a bad experiment. No, it would have been a good experiment. It wouldn't have been a bad idea because now you can see. Yeah. Right. Throw somebody in there, obviously with supervision around, have them go right down to where they would be. Have people dribble a basketball a little bit,

try different experiments, see if you can hear them from different points in the gym, see if you could hear someone yelling from, because you got to imagine if they were yelling, it's going to be at the top of everything they have. And Kendrick wasn't a small, I mean, he would have been able to scream pretty loud. So try to recreate, simulate that scenario to see if you could hear it. And I wonder what those results would have been. Would you have been able to hear it? And if so, how clearly? I think that now that the investigation's open, they probably should do something like that. I love those experiments where you try to recreate the scene to basically test the hypothesis. It's the only way to test the hypothesis. As far as I'm concerned, it's not productive to say, we think this is what

happened, but we can't explain all of these other like outliers, like why nobody heard him, like why the shoes were on top of him. We can't explain all that, but we think that this is what happened. Yeah. Recreate it. Do something. Um, yeah. I wonder if they, maybe you should write them a letter. I mean, maybe someone's listening to this. I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure someone from Kendrick circle who's connected to the case in some way, shape or form. I know we have law enforcement that listens to this podcast. They've messaged me numerous times. So maybe it'll get to someone. I'm sure. I hope there's. Let's try some out of the box thinking and try different things that may not be the most obvious or even traditional, traditional, right? Let's try to use some different things to that may not necessarily be the standard protocol, but may get us some of the answers that we don't have yet.

And I'm going to find out some answers on these shoes too, the Nike shoes that were on top of the mat. I'm sure that there's something out there, even if I have to go to Reddit or something like that to just get some ideas of who those shoes might belong to or if they were his or how the hell they got there, because those shoes are killing me. Before the investigation was done,

the sheriff and the school superintendent, his name's Wes Taylor, they released a joint statement in regard to KJ's death. And I think that this is another reason why the Johnson family maybe thought there was some conspiracy because the superintendent and the sheriff are like, yes, we both believe this. This is our statement. And it said, quote, although the exact cause of death is yet to be determined as of this stage in the investigation, nothing has been discovered to indicate foul play was involved, end quote. And this statement really did set off a chain of events that would turn this case into one of the most perplexing mysteries in true crime. I think they made a Law & Order SVU episode about this case. Like obviously they changed the names and they changed some of the

facts and things like that, but they did make a Law & Order episode based on this case. So it's been very much almost like made for TV. You know, it's not something you see every day and it does need to be looked into. So today's episode, we've gone over the initial investigation that included, you know, the collecting, testing evidence, the autopsy, interviews with several people within the school and outside of the school, and the final determination that KG's death had been a tragic accident. Next week, we're going to discuss the Johnson family's theories, why they believe what they believe,

what actions were taken to get justice for their son. And even though we've gone over the main evidence, we still do need to discuss the discrepancies between the official autopsy and the independent autopsy that KJ's parents did. They had to have him exhumed for this. It's just so tragic and awful. And we need to go over the issues with the surveillance video. Like, I watched a video of this FBI agent or retired FBI agent, and he had a lot of problems with the video. And nobody really has answers of why it was like that. So that's also interesting. And there's also, you know, as far as the surveillance go, there's missing portions of video, the timestamps are off, like it's very suspicious. And we will talk about as well the claims that the Johnsons have made,

not only about the police, but the school, the medical examiner's office, the funeral home that prepared their son for burial, and a handful of students who they believe, I think to this day, are responsible for murdering KJ. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm connected. I'm fully in on this one now. It's a perplexing case. It's fascinating. I can understand why there's so much attention around it. I can also understand why it was reopened. And so we'll see what happens. And again, the reason we're covering it now is to kind of get you guys up to date. For those of you who aren't that familiar with it. I know I wasn't beforehand. I had very little knowledge so that depending on what happens with this new investigation, you'll be all caught up to date on what has transpired so far. And maybe when some news

breaks about it, regardless of the way they go, you'll understand why certain things that they're talking about are so, so important. And I don't think a new investigation can hurt. You know, it either just solidifies the conclusion you already came to or you find out new things. There's also been new evidence, an alleged confession that was audio recorded. But, you know, now people are saying it's a hoax or it's not true. There's a lot to go into, guys. There's twists and turns here that you can't even imagine. So stay tuned. We'll talk more about this next week. Thank you guys so much for being here. Don't forget to follow us on social media. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can leave comments and let us know what you think

about these episodes. And don't forget to send some love our way in the reviews. Five stars if you could. We'll see you guys next week. Bye.