Criminology - Keith Warren

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

In 1986, 19-year-old Keith Warren was found hanging from a tree in Silver Spring, Maryland, and the police quickly ruled it a suicide. Keith's family didn't believe that he had taken his own life. They found the actions of the police suspicious. This included sending Keith's body to a funeral home and having him embalmed without giving the family any type of notice. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious death of Keith Warren. Keith's mother fought to uncover the truth for years before she passed away. Keith's sister, Sherri, has continued the fight to have investigators reopen Keith's case and change his death ruling to undetermined. Sherri joined us for an interview so you'll hear from her during the episode. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 189 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, what's going on with you, buddy? Not much. Just getting over the holidays, spending time with the family, went to a party, had time with the kids.

And my wife, it was just a good bunch of downtime where you, you know, wake up whenever you feel like it and you don't have to send an alarm. It's real nice to have that time off. I think we both need that. How about you? Yeah, it was nice and got to spend a lot more time with the family than normal. So I agree. I think we needed it, but I'm excited because it's 2022. We're back and we're going to put out a bunch of good episodes. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what the new year brings and what cases we'll talk about. Let's start out by giving some Patreon shoutouts. We had Gabriella Ferrara, D.D. Pete's, Kells Bells, Dave Richardson, Shelina N. Woodbury, and Michelle Price. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it.

Yeah. Thanks as always for that. That means a lot and helps us get the show out. And we appreciate that. And for anyone that would like to help support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. So I mentioned 2022. It's kind of hard to believe, but I'm excited for it. I'm also excited for CrimeCon Vegas. It's only a few months away. It's kind of really getting real now at this point. Yeah, CrimeCon Vegas is happening April 29th through May 1st, and it's going to be a blast. And I think it's a great way for all of us to catch up, all the people out there that want to catch up with their fellow true crime friends. It's a perfect way to do it. Now, if you have not made plans,

We're getting close to crunch time. The holidays are behind us. Time is running out. Get your CrimeCon passes now by heading over to CrimeCon.com and be sure to use our promo code criminology to save 10% off your standard badges. So more if we have all that out of the way, the holidays are behind us.

It's time for you and I to get back in the saddle. Let's jump into this episode. Yeah, our first episode of 2022 centers around a very suspicious death that was quickly ruled a suicide. But as you'll hear in the last, this episode, there seems to be a lot of things that just don't add up or make much sense. And what we actually may have here is a 36-year-old murder. And if that's the case, then justice has gone unserved for a very long time.

And whoever's responsible has slipped through the cracks. We're talking about the mysterious death of 19-year-old Keith Warren in Silver Spring, Maryland. Keith, an African-American man, was found hanged from a tree. Much of her information in this episode comes from Keith's family because his mother, of Mary Cui fought hard to obtain the evidence and records in this case. And Keith's sister Sherry has carried on that quest for answers since Mary's passing. Sherry sat down with us to discuss her brother's case, and you'll hear from her throughout this episode.

Since this case starts 36 years ago, you know, I kind of think it's important to go back and examine the community where this happened. The unincorporated town of Silver Spring, Maryland, including its population and its history. at the time of Keith's death in 1986, the town near Washington, D.C., had almost 76,000 residents. Today, using Best Neighborhood.org's interactive map, you can see that the Silver Spring area is almost a dividing line. With the Caucasian majority areas of Bethesda, Maryland to the west, as well as Arlington, Virginia, and downtown Washington, D.C., farther south, the smaller African-American majority areas directly to the south and heading eastward include Tacoma Park and Chillam. Silver Spring itself appears divided with the neighborhoods going north like Woodside Park being predominantly white and only a few areas in the southern tip of the city

showing really any diversity. There are also little subsections of Silver Spring like Glenmont, Wheaton, and Aspen Hill, to name a few. There's certainly a stark contrast in demographics in the majority of Silver Spring, and it's not surprising if you look into the history of the community. There are a few pieces online by historian David S. Rodenstein that discussed the origins of the town. Rotenstein wrote that Silver Spring was an area covering more than 10 square miles, where racial restrictive deed covenants prevented African Americans from owning or running homes. The desegregation of businesses in the area did not start until late 1915. and there was no open housing law in Montgomery County until 1968. According to Rotenstein, Silver Spring in 2016 looked nothing like the Silver Spring of

1956, except in the community's histories and the monuments to white supremacy as far as buildings and nostalgia narratives that those histories seek to preserve. Though thankfully, times have changed a lot since the early days of Silver Spring. The history of the area makes it easy to wonder whether the suspicious death is something more. Now that we've talked a little bit about Silver Spring, let's talk about Keith himself. Keith Waddell Warren was born in Topeka, Kansas to Cleo and Mary Warren. Cleo and Mary divorced and Keith, his sister Sherry and their mother, Mary Cooey, moved to the Aspen Hill section of Silver Spring in 1979 after the divorce. Sherry told us a little bit about her brother,

Keith? Keith was a typical big brother. He was lovable. He was quiet. He was an intro, well, not an introvert. We were told separate on the personality pendulum. Like, he's, I'm an extrovert. What's on my mind comes out my mouth, and he was quiet. He was more so subdued. But he was very lovable, likable. He was a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin. He was loved. He had a life, and his life mattered. They got along with everyone. Keith never had a record. He was never arrested.

I don't even think he had a traffic ticket, to be honest with you, but I could be wrong. But to my knowledge, he was just an easygoing, mild-mannered person and was very likable. On July 31, 1986, 19-year-old Keith Warren was found hanging from a tree in a wooded section of Silver Spring, not far from his home. 9-1-1 dispatch had received the call from a female. caller, claiming that there was a possible attempted suicide by hanging in the basement of 146.55, Tynewick Drive. When first responders arrived, they had to knock on the door, and after waiting for quite a while, they found Chip Wynn, the home's owner, his girlfriend, Claudia Lawson, and a third unidentified mail at the home. The three of them seemed confused and tried to

figure out if any of them had even called the police. It was eventually clear that it had been Claudia who made the call. First responders wanted to see the body, which they expected to be in the basement of the home. Instead, they were informed that the body wasn't in the basement, but in the woods. Most reports online say that only Claudia accompanied investigators into the woods, where she said she had been walking her dog when she stumbled upon Keith's body. This is the version of her story that made it into the official police reports. It was just before 2 p.m. when Keith was discovered in the wooded area just off of Georgia Avenue behind the neighborhood where his family's townhouse was located in Aspen Hill. So obviously there was some confusion regarding this 911

call. First responders showed up expecting to find a body in the basement. But when they got there, the scene was actually someplace else. And then Claudia cleared it up and told them that she actually found a body in the woods. So either there was some confusion. In the end, initial call to police or the story changed at some point. And if that's the case, you have to ask the question why. When Claudia brought police and paramedics to the area in the woods where Keith was, a grisly scene greeted them. Keith was dead. A noose was tied around his neck and he was suspended from a tree. The noose and rope set up was elaborate and was wrapped around more than one tree, a 40-foot long rope, which officers came to believe that Keith bought at a store on Georgia and Connecticut avenues,

was first tied around the bottom of a large tree's trunk, then wrapped around the trunk of a skinny sapling, about 25 feet away from the first tree, and then strung over a tree branch, which was, according to a police report, 15 to 18 feet off the ground. This rope was never tested, fingerprinted, analyzed. Later, it would emerge that, although police stated that they thought they knew where Keith had bought the rope, the store had no receipt for the sale of the rope, nor did they have any security footage of Keith buying it. Police canvassed the neighborhood and found one of Keith's friends, who was a former classmate who lived nearby named Rodney Cadell,

and they asked him to identify Keith's body. Investigator James Beasley was in charge of the scene. But he didn't stay there long. He left and Officer Luther Leverett took over, command of the scene. The area wasn't closed off or secured properly, according to police procedure. Bistanders reportedly heard Leverett ask, coldly, why would this have to happen on my lunch break? Leverett almost immediately ruled Keith's death a suicide, and he notified the corner via radio, not to waste time coming to the scene, since there was obviously no foul play. There was no suicide note found on or near Keith's body. On Keith's death certificate, Officer Leverd is listed as the one who pronounced him dead, though in his official report, he stated that Dr. Rogers was on the scene.

If the medical examiner had been at the scene, there's no reason that a police officer should have or would have pronounced the death. There's specific protocols in place for this scenario. It's not the job of the police officer to determine a manner cause of death. It's the medical Examiner. This failure of proper police procedure was only the beginning of many. Officer Leverett and Dr. Rogers released Keese body, which was sent directly to Collins' funeral home, not the morgue, where it was embalmed almost immediately. No autopsy was ordered because no foul play was suspected. According to Officer Leverett's reports, all evidence indicated suicide. Shockingly, Kees' family didn't authorize any of this. In fact,

they hadn't even been notified that he was dead. Reports from the scene indicate that Keith must have apparently jumped off a log and his body weight completed his intent. But paramedics would later say that they did not see a log or any object in the area that he could have jumped off. Keith's car was found parked a quarter of a mile away from the woods, parked in a residential neighborhood, near the clubhouse for the complex.

It's worth pointing out, that there are many spots available much closer to the area where Keith's body was found. Around six hours after Keith's body had been discovered, his mother, Mary, a medical lab technician in the pathology department at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, received a call from a neighbor urging her to call Officer Leverett. The neighbor was upset, but wouldn't tell Mary what happened. All she could relay was that it was extremely urgent. Officer Leverett then goes to my house, which of course nobody's home, he then goes to my next door neighbor's house and she was a stay-at-home mom at the time and he said to her

he showed her a picture of keith it was Keith had five phones of ID on him uh was it was between three and five but one of them was his driver's license he showed her a picture of keith's driver's license he tells her about he's body he says do you know how to contact the mom my neighbor was like well she works at waltz read here's her phone number and try to give him the phone. He said, no, you have her call me and gives her his business card and leave. And then per Montgomery County and the information that we received from them, Officer Leverett, then goes to 7-11 to find, which was down the street to see how much wine, how many wine coolers Keith bought, went to Keith's job, which was Glenmont Chrysler, which was on that same strip,

to make a public notification that Keith was found dead, which is, again, prior to notifying the next kin, then goes to Heckenger's to find out something about the rope. And now, while he's doing all of that, our neighbor called my mom at work and said, you need to call this number and ask for this officer. And my mom was like, well, what's going on? And my neighbor did not feel like it was her place to tell my mom her son was dead, her only son was dead. So my neighbor, he's like, no, you just need to call.

So starting at about 1.30, 1.45 until about 6 o'clock that night, my mom kept calling the precinct. And finally, Leverett, not Beasley, shows up at her job at Walter Reed. Now, my mom worked at the hematology lab in a hospital. When he shows up, he tells her that her son is dead. Okay, she loses it. They sedate her. And this was told to me by Montgomery County that Leverett did not follow policy or procedure

when he interviewed my mother, because there was no third party in the room with her when he interviewed her. She disputed it up until the day she died, the stuff that he put on that police report that she supposedly said, because she didn't recall because she was sedated. So again, you have police officer Leverett and Detective Beasley nowhere to be found, not following policy procedure on a person who was loved, whose life mattered. When Mary called Officer Leverett, she was informed that he was responding to a call. and wouldn't be in the office for at least another two hours. The police report notes that an attempt to notify the next of kin at the residence was negative. The next door neighbor, Miss Nichols, was shown Keith's photograph and she made a secondary positive identification after the one Keith's friend had made.

Asking for a second idea of Keith's body by someone who was not his family member might seem a little lot. because according to the police report, Keith had his ID in his pocket. Miss Nichols also gave officers Mary's work number. About two hours later, Officer Leverett arrived at Mary's place of work and started questioning her about Keith. He showed her Key Swimming Pool ID card and asked her if that was indeed her son Keith. When she confirmed it was him and mentioned to the officer that Keith had been missing for two days, Officer Leverett informed her that Keith had taken his own life.

And he asked Mary why her son would have done it. Mary was stunned by the news. She tried to think of anything that could have caused her son to take his own life, something that she thought was completely out of character for Keith. She was almost grasping at straws for a reason to give Officer Leverett. Mary remembered that she and Keith had argued about his car. Keith's father Cleo, a former major with the Durham, North Carolina Police Department, had given him a blue 1976 Corvette as a high school graduation present.

But on July 21st, Keith lost his job and would not be able to afford his upcoming $2,000 car insurance payment that was due on July 30th. This caused a few arguments between him and both of his parents. And on July 29th, he was told that on July 3,000, 31st. Cleo would be traveling from North Carolina to Maryland to pick up the Corvette. Keith and Cleo reportedly had a tense relationship at times. In fact, in 1985, Keith had been visiting his dad in North Carolina when they argued, and Keith suffered a panic attack from the stress. He was hospitalized for four days at Duke University Medical Center until Mary picked him up and took

him back to Maryland. It was just after this that Cleo had gifted him the Corvette, which Mary he felt basically gave Keith a new lease on life. He had freedom. It meant he could date girls, hang out with friends anywhere, and he could go to jobs. A car is a big deal to a teenager, especially a Corvette. What young man wouldn't have loved that kind of car? But could losing that car be enough to make Keith want to take his own life? On Tuesday, July 29th, just two days before he was found dead, after he had talked to his father, Keith got a phone call at home. When he hung up around 6 p.m., he left to go see some point. friends. He had some cassette tapes with him when he left, like he was going to listen to music with

his friends. On July 30th, Keith still hadn't returned home, so his mother Mary called the Montgomery County police and attempted to notify them that her son was missing. Unfortunately, they told her that it would not be considered missing persons case until 48 hours had passed, unless Keith had a severe medical condition. Officer Leverett believed that his father's upcoming visit and the prospect of losing the Corvette had upset Keith enough to send him into a depression so bad that he chose to take his own life. In his report dated July 31st, the same day that Keith was found, Leverett stated that Keith was depressed last year. It seemed to marry Cui that officers knew both Keith and Chip Winn, the man who lived in the home that Claudia called 911 from. This is

backed up by handwritten notes from the scene that indicate that Detective Beasley somehow knew about Keith's previous panic attack that put him in the hospital hours before he interviewed Mary. The notes specified that there was no mention as to the source of information on the mental background. Leverett also indicated that Keith did not feel like his father loved him and that he was too demanding. For his part, Keith's dad, Cleo Warren, did feel that Keith's dad could have been investigated more thoroughly, but he did not disagree with the suicide ruling. As Mary tried to make sense of her son's death, she looked back at what was going on recently in his life. Keith had graduated from John F. Kennedy High School, and he was set to start college the next month at North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina.

He had worked a few summer jobs, including shifts at Glenmont Chrysler and Bell Pre-Shell. During the summer, Mary noticed that Keith had begun to hang out with, what she called disreputable people, and she knew that some of them may have been involved in drugs. When Officer Leverett visited Mary at work, Mary reportedly asked him multiple times if any drugs may have been involved, although Keith had no history of drug use. It was a valid question due to the friends Keith had recently made, and the fact that Aspen Hill was known for a lot of teenage drug activity. Officer Leverett denied to Mary that drugs played any role in Keith's death. Before he left, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Officer Leverett gave Mary a business card for the funeral home where Keith had been sent and told her to call them at 9 a.m. the next day.

But Mary immediately called her brother and asked him to visit Collins' funeral home. But when he tried to visit to identify the body, he was denied entry three different times. Staff there told him to return the next day. Keith's body was sent to this funeral home without his mother's permission. and his body prepped for embalming, and by this point, not one single family member had identified his body. It seems unusual for a family to have no say in what funeral home will handle a loved one's body, let alone that the body be embalmed without their say so. The issues with Keith's body going to that funeral home was just one of many things that were troubling, as Mary would eventually

learned. The fact that Keyes family had no say in what happened with his body is understandably still a very sore subject. In my numerous conversations and meetings with Montgomery County, they would like to get in semantics, play semantics with you. And they'll say, well, we didn't choose the funeral home. My mom didn't choose a funeral home. My dad didn't choose a funeral home. I couldn't because I was a minor. So who chose the funeral home? Beasley did. And he sent the body to that funeral home and ordered no autopsy. And then in the same set of documents that I received from them, which is, again, I got there at Beasley's notes as well. In his notations and his timeline, he called Collins funeral home at 10 a.m. on Friday morning and was told the body had been

processed. This is a whole four hours before my uncle ID my brother's body. They told my mom, the Keith's dead. She called my uncle. My uncle jobs him and his family up from North Carolina. He goes to the funeral home to try to ID Keith's body. He's denied access. This is like 12 midnight. They were told, no, he goes to the police department. The police department's like, well, we don't have them. The funeral home has them. So the funeral home, he goes to the funeral home. The funeral home says, well, we're closed with business hours. You got to come back the next day. He gets up the next morning.

Again, my mom is heavily sedated. I'm driving from Jersey with my aunt and my dad is in North Carolina. So he goes to the funeral home. They say to him, he's met by the funeral home director the next morning. We need the next of kin. So Mom had to go back to our house, drag my mother and him, my aunt had to drag my mom into the funeral home. They pushed these papers in front of her. She's sedated.

Okay, I'm going to keep emphasizing that. They didn't tell her what she was signing. She was under the impression she was signing papers that would release the body to her. Like, she didn't understand nothing. nobody we were all caught up in the moment of what we just need to know if that's key that's all we wanted to do come to find out and this is how twisted people play on your emotions and and they take advantage you at your weakest point that raggedy ass funeral home and i'm sorry because i do curse and i haven't cursed but i'm when i talk about them that raggedy ass funeral home took advantage because the paper that they put in front of her weren't papers to release the body to us they were giving her giving them permission to do what they had a already done because going back remember i told you beasley called the funeral home per his notes at 10 a.m and they said the body had been processed my mom my mom couldn't get my mom there until about 11 12 and then he had to take her back home still hadn't seen the body mind you come they said bring take her home

and when you come back bring back clothing that you want him prepared in so he does that he comes back and they still try to deny him access to the body saying the but was so much decomposition and we don't recommend it to you view the body mom's like I'm not about to not leave you without saying my nephew and then they got to whatever he got access to the body said that way and it was key but there was no decomposition and you can look in the pictures that I have that's online there's no decomposition they wanted us to actually they suggested cremation we weren't that's not what we're going to do we weren't doing that but they actually put that out on the table you should we think you should have him cremated

fire department EMT Dallas Lip was one of the first responders at the scene where Keith's body was found. And he noted that the scene didn't appear to be a suicide to him. It appeared that Keith had actually been hoisted up into the air. The way the rope was wrapped around the trees was more for leverage to pull weighed up. Because of this, Dallas Lip, who is now a lieutenant for a different squad, actually felt that the scene appeared to have been a lynching. In fact, he even provided a sworn statement in 2003, 17 years after Keith's death, that provided a lot of doubt about whether Keith took his own life or not. It was in this affidavit that Claudia Lawson is described as reluctantly leading investigators to the spot where Keith was found. Dallas Slip was interviewed by her friend

Jules over at Riddle Me That podcast, and Jules asked him about some of the details regarding what he witnessed the fateful day when Keith's body was found. Jules was kind enough to share some of that discussion with us, which you can hear in this segment. So in 1986, I was actually the rookiest of the rookie firefighters that responded to this incident. I was employed as a part-time firefighter by a local fire department at the time. I was in the process of trying to get hired in my current job working for the county that I work for, but I responded to this as a rookie firefighter. So I was certainly not a lieutenant at the time.

I was the lowest man on the totem pole on the incident. I now am a captain for my jurisdiction at the time that this incident sort of gained notoriety as the photos became available to marry and there started to become a lot of media coverage and stuff like that. At that time in my career, I was a lieutenant. So a lot of the references to me in reference to this case assumed that I was a lieutenant at the time that I actually ran the incident. I was not, and I was in no way, shape, or form in charge of the incident. It's certainly not something that you run every day, but I've certainly been on a number of suicides, and the reality is most of the suicides that I'd run and still run today are normally by gunshot or overdose. That's much more common.

I have run occasionally other suicides by hanging. This one is exceptional in my personal experience, because it's the only one where the person was still hanging when we got there. one, they've been removed from that position cut down by whoever found them or whatever by the time we got there. The next segment with Dallas Lip is a bit lengthy, but it demonstrates just how unusual things started out that day when his crew was dispatched to the scene. This incident sort of was always stuck with me in terms of that type of impact on me because it was just so profoundly unexpected in terms of what we found when we ran the incident. It was a, as I recall, early to the middle of the afternoon. The station I was working at is a fairly busy station. We often

run a lot of incidents within a shift. So getting dispatched on this type of call is not exactly unexpected. We all believed that we were going to find the person inside the residence. And I cannot recall some almost 30 years later exactly what was said. But I know we had a very firm belief the entirety of the crew that we were going to find whoever was had tried to commit suicide inside the residence and we were a little bit confused when we got to the scene two units responded on the incident engine company fire truck with water on it and a medic unit ems unit and i was on the ems unit and when we got to the scene we were a little bit confused because if you run this type of call almost always there's somebody jumping up and down

trying to get your attention when you get sometimes even a block away. They're like running with you to try to show you where it is. People are extremely animated in these circumstances typically. But we pulled up to the dispatched address and the door was closed. There was no indication of any activity around. So we were a little bit surprised by that, but we assumed that, hey, this must be the right place. So we approached the residence and the officer in charge, the lieutenant on the engine, went up and knocked on the door and didn't get a response, which that's unusual, because even if you do get on this type of scene,

if the door is closed, if they're not meeting you in the street, I mean, as soon as you hit the door, somebody's almost always right there to let you in and say, come this way, come this way, whatever this bad thing is to take you to the scene. They're always very animated. But there was no response.

So he knocked again harder. There was still no response. As I recall, he even got to the point where he did an address, We called on the radio to check with the dispatcher to make sure we were at the right location. And the dispatcher came back and read back the numbers to us. I mean, this was back at a time before we had all the technology that we have today. So you sort of remembered the numbers when you left the fire station.

You didn't have a device in your hand that had the numbers on it. So the dispatcher read the numbers back after the address check and said, no, these are the right house numbers. We're on the right street. So we're just contemplating what to do next. So we're sitting there deciding whether we need to like broaden our search, like look around the other side of the building or something. We're even starting to consider the option for forcible entry thinking, okay, this is the right address. Maybe we just need the force entry. And about that time, while all this is being discussed, is when the door opened.

And when the door opened, our assumption is, okay, maybe whoever it was was wherever in the house this thing happened. And they heard us banging and it took us a minute for them to get to us, but we're thinking, okay, now we're rolling on and we're going to make entry and go address this patient. Well, the lieutenant started to take a step into the door as it opened and the woman who opened the door said, whoa, whoa, no, it's not here. You're not coming in here. And he's like, what? Because we've been told, and I don't recall whether we were specifically told that it was in the basement or whether that was just an assumption that we had in terms of, it was definitely dispatched to the address, not to the rear of or anything like that. It was dispatched to the address. And we may have made the assumption that it was

in the basement because typically a hanging, that's where it occurs. There's normally more means to rig that type of thing in a basement than in other rooms in the house. But in any case, we definitely were thinking that whatever was happening was happening inside this house. So the lieutenant went to make entry. The woman says, no, no, it's not here. It's in the woods. And the lieutenant says, what do you mean? She says, it's in the woods behind here. Just go around the end of the building and you'll find it. Well, there was a stand of woods at the time that was behind this group of townhouses. And the townhouse that we were at was that end unit townhouse on the far end. The row of townhouses was actually perpendicular to the stand of woods. So this townhouse was

at the end unit on the far end away from the woods. And she's kind of pointing. She never stepped out the door, but she's kind of pointing, just go around the end and you'll, you'll find them. And the lieutenant's like, no, and at the time it was a large stand of woods. It's since been developed. But back then, there was a lot of woods there. And the lieutenant's like, no, take us and show us. It's too much for us to search. And she's like, no, I can't do that. He says, no, you got to take us because we just can't search all these woods. And then she starts, and I don't recall exactly where the conversation with somebody back in the house started. But I know it. but at least at that point, if not slightly before,

she's talking to somebody that's back inside the house that's out of our view. And she's hollering at them. And then she closes the door for a minute. And she disappears for maybe about a minute, literally. And then this man comes to the door and says, I'll take you. Well, we look at him and he's on crutches. He's got a cast on his lower leg. And he's on crutches.

And we're like, no, we need somebody that can move. We've got to get back to our patient. And then there was more discussion with him and her. She was standing behind him at this point at the door. And we're like, no, we need her to take us to where the patient is if she knows where he is. And at that point, this second male person enters the discussion. And he says, I'll take you. And he was obviously very annoyed that he was having to do this, which was just striking all,

at least struck me and later as we discussed it. struck all of us as strange. I mean, why is he so feeling or acting put out by having to walk us back to where this person is that they've called 911 for? So he takes us and we go around the end of the townhouse. And it actually turned out not to be too difficult to find the location. Now, we didn't know that standing at the door of the house. But if you went around the end of the townhouse, he was only, the scene was only about maybe 30 or 40 feet into the woods. And there was a path that cut through the woods that went to another community back behind that I guess people used to move back and forth between those two communities. And he was not too far off of that path,

maybe 15 or 20 feet off that path. So once the second gentleman led us back into the woods, he took us back to the path. We went down the path and within a few feet, we could see Keith hanging there from the tree. And it was also pretty immediately apparent that there wasn't anything that we were like to be able to do to help them. So at that point, the officer in charge said, okay, just stop here so we don't contaminate the scene, sent the paramedic in charge up to check Keith to ensure that in fact he had passed and was beyond any help while the rest of us stood back and the paramedic went up and checked and it was very obvious that we couldn't do anything to a system and then the paramedic came back to us. So that was a

kind of our initial response and the way everything went down, which was all very strange getting to that, just to that point. Dallas Lipp described his arrival in initial observations at the spot where Keith's body was found. This really paints a picture of what the scene looked like that day. So as soon as we saw the body and the officer gave the direction to stand back and let the paramedic in charge check, we all just stopped in our tracks at that point. And at that point, We're just making sure nobody else approaches the scene, but there wasn't anybody else back there with us at that particular moment other than our crew and the gentleman from the townhouse who had led us back. And so there wasn't really any scene security to be undertaken.

So I just started looking at this and trying to process what I was seeing. And I'm not a historian, but I understand history and I understand what's happened over time. and I'm sitting there looking at this incident and in my head there's flashing to photos I've seen of lynchings that have occurred throughout the country over many decades of our history. And this looks just like those photos to me. And I'm trying to basically talk myself out of that position inside my head. I'm thinking, I see this. I see what I think is a lynching, but no, that's crazy. crazy. It's 1986. That doesn't happen in 1986. There's got to be some other explanation for this.

But as I'm looking at it, it's very difficult, actually impossible both then and now for me, to come up with any other explanation in terms of the way the rope was rigged. And just to clarify, I can talk about this a little bit more. I don't believe now it was a lynching. But at the time, I certainly believe that that was a very strong possibility. because his feet were in contact with the ground and not by a little bit, by a lot. The photos that you see of the scene that the police ultimately took, you see his legs straight out in front of him, and his legs are bent at about maybe a 30 to a 40 degree angle relative to the torso of his body out in front of him.

But when we arrived on the scene, his knees were actually flexed with his feet under him. So he was kind of in a position where his knees were almost at a 90 degree angle with kind of the toes of his shoes dragging on the ground under him. And the rope, when it left his body, went up through a crotch in a tree that was pretty small in diameter. I'm guessing the base of the tree was three, four, maybe five inches at the most at the base. and the rope went up through that crotch in the tree, traveled down to the base of the tree, where it was wrapped around the base of the tree one to two times. And then it traveled horizontally from that point at about 12 to 18 inches off the ground to another tree that was much larger, probably 18 inches or so.

So when I'm sitting there looking at this, having just come across it, and seeing his body suspended there, I'm not a detective or an investigator. I do understand moving heavy things. That's one of the things we do in the fire service. And in particular, moving people and what it takes to move the dead weight of a body, an unconscious patient or somebody who's deceased or whatever. It's much more cumbersome than most people assume it to be. If you watch it on TV, oh, they can just sort of pick up a body and move it with no difficulty.

But that's not the way it works in the real world. It's a difficult thing to do. So anyways, I'm looking at this rope and this kind of. configuration, I'm realizing that this rope is configured for hoisting. So what somebody did to get him into position was they threw the rope through the crotch of the tree. They hoisted him up, which would have taken more than one person to do in all probability because they didn't have any mechanical devices in the system at all. There was no pulleys, nothing to reduce the friction in the system. So hoisting him into that position would have required probably a couple of people to do. And it

not have been an easy thing to do with the friction of the rope going through the crotch of the tree. But once they got it to that point, they needed to then carry the load while they tied the rope off. So an obvious way to do that is to take a couple of wraps around the base of the tree. That increases the friction so that now you don't have to worry about the rope slipping and him coming back to the ground. But if you're doing this, your focus is probably just to get him clear the ground by some nominal distance. If you're trying to stage this scene to make it look like a suicide or something, and you're not thinking about the fact that you've chosen a poorly selected tree to do this with, and given some time, this tree is going to bend due to the weight of the body.

So I am guessing, and this is just a guess, I have no evidence of this or anything, that they may have raised his body a foot or so off of the ground, thinking that that may have made the scene appear to be a suicide or something, tied it off and then left. But in the intervening hours, I'm guessing, the weight of his body caused that tree to flex so that by the time that we got there in the middle of the afternoon, it was late in July, so it was a fairly warm day,

that tree had flexed over to the point that his body was firmly, in contact with the ground. So as I'm looking at all this, like I say, I'm trying to convince myself at that moment. I'm trying to convince myself I'm not looking at a lynching. And an obvious way to talk myself out of that is say, okay, it's a bizarre way to configure the rope if you're going to commit suicide. But let's go with that hypothesis that is to commit suicide. How could one person have done this? So from my position, 20 or so feet away from where he was, I started studying the area to see if there was something that he could have stepped off of or something like that to have done this to himself. But there was absolutely nothing anywhere in proximity to that tree.

And I looked not just at the base of the tree. I sort of looked in a radius around the tree, basically equivalent to the radius that he was now away from the stump of the tree. Because by the time the tree bent over and he came in contact with the tree, he was probably eight or so feet away from the maybe even 10 feet away from the base of the tree. So I sort of did a visual sweep of a radius of about eight to 10 feet around the stump of that tree looking for something. Maybe he could have stepped off of it on the back of the tree, but when the tree started bending for whatever reason, it bent away from where he initially was positioned and came back

to this position we found it in. There was absolutely nothing. So what I came to the conclusion of was that the only way that he could have done this by himself was to have rigged the rope in this bizarre manner, shenny up this very small tree to probably eight to ten feet off the ground, move the rope into position around his neck, and then let go of the tree. I believe that's probably a physical impossibility that anybody could have done that. Now, I know that investigators will tell you that people can hang themselves off a doorknob and a house and stuff like that.

But he would have had to have gotten that rope around his neck that would have been elevated above his head by probably at least four to five feet had the tree not had the weight of his body on it. It definitely appeared to me that people got him into that position. Now, I guess he could have said maybe, well, basically, I'll just leave it. at that. Somebody had to have moved him into that position. There's no way he could have done it himself. And it was, like I say, very consistent with a system that somebody could put in place with moving a body into that position if they were dealing with dead weight. Because that's a

very typical strategy for managing that kind of weight is to take a wrap on something to hold the load while you tie it off to something else. Dallas described what happened after investigators arrived on the scene. first officer to arrive. I later learned was Officer Leverett. I did not know his name at the time. It was many years later that I learned his name. I actually learned of Officer Leverett before I knew it was a connection to the case because I have some other connections to the Montgomery County Police. So I'd learned his name before I ever knew of his association with the case. And I'd even met him, I think, once separately, not knowing there was any connection between him in this case.

But anyway, when he showed up on the scene, by this time, I had pretty well convinced myself that I was looking at a lynching. And I was just horrified by this. And I don't know if it's what the proper word to say, but there was a sense of relief when I saw him show up because Officer Lever, it's a black man. And I'm sitting there thinking, maybe some eyes wouldn't look at this and see what I'm seeing. But the thought was, well, a black officer, I would think would be more primed or attuned to looking at this and seeing what I think I'm seeing and at least consider that as a possibility. So I never personally interacted with him. The officer in charge of the incident, the lieutenant and the paramedic in charge, both spoke to him. I was standing maybe 10 or 15 feet away from that conversation, have no recollection of the particulars.

I assume it was just a general finding so far and the fact that there was nothing that we could do for and what our actions had been to that point in case there was any question of who'd been close to the body and stuff. And then we cleared the scene. And as I was walking away from the scene, I'm thinking, okay, we've got this officer who's shown up. I'm thinking he's going to maybe perceive this the same way I'm perceiving it. And I'm expecting a cataclysm in the county, basically. I'm expecting to hear this on the evening news. I mean, we're adjacent to Washington, D.C. So local news sometimes becomes national news because of the media coverage that it can generate.

I'm expecting to see this in the local newspapers. And here, the local newspaper, one of them is the Washington Post. So often that generates national coverage. So when I went home that evening, I'm expecting to see stories about this on the news, and I didn't hear or see anything. Big thanks again to Jules for supplying us with that audio. Be sure to check out her podcast rolling me that. Just days after Keith's body was found, the Montgomery County police cut down the tree that he was found hanging from, claiming that it was to preserve any possible evidence. Keyes' family's suspicions quickly began to grow. After months of demanding evidence, Mary finally received...

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door, and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Receive the rope, but not the noose, which apparently had been lost. She also received Keese brown boots. None of Keese clothing besides his jacket was given back to his family,

supposedly because decomposition had so badly damaged them that the funeral home had to destroy them. The family was also given a duffel bag with cassette tapes and, it and a hat, neither of which seemed to have been at the scene where Keith's body was found. When the family hoped that there could be additional testing done on the tree, they found out that it couldn't be analyzed any further, even though it had been cut down and taken as evidence, because according to the Keith Warrin Justice site, it was disposed of in 1988. According to Mary's timeline, she was told that the tree had been destroyed by a fire, which broke out in the storage facility at police headquarters.

Detective James Beasley said that the tree wasn't cut down by police, though it was gone. Beasley stated that he cut down the notch on the tree where the rope had been thrown over, and he kept it for two years and then disposed of it. This brings up the question if it was a clear-cut case of suicide, what need would there be to collect things like the tree for evidence? Keith's family first found out for themselves that the scene had been altered when she asked to be taken to the tree Keith was found on so that she could say a prayer. Rodney, the friend of Keith that initially IDed his body, agreed to take her to the tree.

Going back to the month after we buried him, my aunt asked Rodney to take her to the tree. They get to where the tree is supposed to be and there's no tree. So my aunt comes back in the house. She tells my mom, she calls the precinct. She demands to speak to Detective Beasley. He gets on the phone. He said, yeah, we cut it down. we're holding it for evidence.

If the case is closed, how are you collecting evidence a month later? And then come to find out that this tree was destroyed four years later in a warehouse fire, so there was no tree. But supposedly Beasley cut the tree down and it gets to the branch. And I found out this year in 2021,

it took me 35 years to understand the reason why he cut this tree down. But again, things are revealed to you in time. The reason why that branch was cut and destroyed is because that branch could tell you which way the rope was either going up or down. Mary felt in her heart that something wasn't right in her son's case. She thought that there was more than meets the eye, but she was met with resistance and a lack of answers. Officially, Key's case was closed. In 1990, the FBI refused to investigate Keith's death or the handling of the investigation because they had found no violations of federal.

law. Mary just about gave up hope that she would get any kind of answers. Then on April 9th, 1992, what would have been Key's 25th birthday, Mary received an envelope. It was a manila envelope on her front porch addressed to her with no return address or identifying information. Inside the envelope were copies of the actual crime scene photos taken by police. There were five photographs in total. The pictures were left on our doorstep in 1992 on his 25th birthday. They are pictures from the police department. They just don't know how we got them. And the ironic part about it is they probably spent more manpower and money on trying to figure out how we got the pictures than on how Keith got on the tree. In the pictures, though, he's strung up. He's not hanging down. His feet

are literally on the ground. He has on white tennis shoes, again, long pants, long sleeve shirt. The rope is caught up. If you look at the rope in the pictures, it's caught up in the collar of his shirt. So he was really in a rush to put himself on a tree. He has leaves on the back of his shirt, which would indicate that he was laying on the ground and then was hoisted into that position. So in any good investigative unit, you would think, that just those little tidbits would bring to attention that something wasn't right here. Something wasn't, this is not, this is not what we're, what they want us to see is not what we're seeing, which was whoever did this, and again, let's go back to the time of death.

Because there's no definitive time of death, the area that Keith was found in has no lights. That's a densely wooded area, and the moon probably has, will, probably it's built in now so you really can't i really can't it unsolved mysteries you actually did it they filmed in the actual area but at night it's dark so you and it's on line dallas lip did a um the paramedic on scene did a uh a diagram of how the rope was tied around the base of one tree and then flung over onto a branch of a tree in front of it and it was this really weird rope configuration. In addition to the photos sent to Keith's mom,

there was also a note that warned two people were in danger. One person was named Laurent Berman. The other was Mark Finley, whose full name is Harold E. Finley III, but who went by Mark, these were both people that Keith knew. The note read, Miss Warren.

Don't worry, Mark Finley will, be next. While it reopened a lot of old wounds for Mary, the thought that the truth about what happened to her son might be coming gave her new hope. Now, when Mark Finley heard about this note, he reached out to Mary to talk. He left her a note that read, Miss Warren, I will be by to see you. I need to unload. But we don't know what exactly Mark wanted to talk about with Mary because they never had that discussion. It has been reported that. It has been reported that there were rumors that Mark bragged at parties that he had helped string Keith up.

Mary scoured the crime scene photos that were sent to her for clues. While they were difficult for her to see, she knew that there may be a clue there. Keith had lived with her his whole life, and she regularly did his laundry, so she was familiar with all of his clothes. Mary noticed that the clothes Keith had on in the photos were not his. She didn't recognize any of them, including the white tennis shoes he was wearing. Keith didn't own any white athletic shoes. His boots and his jacket, which had been returned to Mary, were not seen in any of these photographs, even though they were supposedly near his body. The thing that's suspicious here is that someone knew these were Keith's boots, even though he was wearing shoes. If the police were

right and Keith had walked a quarter of a mile from his car to the woods to hang himself, he took a change of clothes and shoes with him, as well as the rope, the duffel bag full of tapes, and eight wine coolers that were found. Why would he have done all this and what happened to his other clothes? So he left the house wearing his blue hoodie jacket, a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and his brown construction boots. What we got back in 1986 was just the blue hoodie jacket, his Jimmy Hendricks hat, the brown construction boots, the duffel bag. We did not get back to shirt, pants, or underwear. Then in the pictures, he's wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt. shirt that is not wasn't typical of his his his his attire that wasn't i used to be in his closet

and in his pants and his clothes because i was always looking for money because i'm typical never found any because he's always broke but i digress um but that wasn't his style and when i asked montgomery county in 2012 in 2012 2014 2018 and 2020 and 2020 where did the clothes and that we got back in 1986 come from because they're not inventory. They're not listed on the police report. Where did you get them from? So the answer typically I get is they were somewhere around his body. Okay, so you're telling me, and this is what they want me to believe,

because remember, I told you I also got back two, my mom got back two four-pack empty wine coolers. So where are the bottles? None of the bottles were collected or tested. That should have been eight bottles, right? So what you're telling me, and this is what I said to them in my meeting, is that you want me to believe that my brother wanted to be casket sharp before he wanted to go kill himself.

So he took a change of clothes. See, that's a million-dollar question. And this is where I can't get a direct answer from. Where did Officer Leverett, get the quote that's the things that we knew and could identify, where did he get them from? Because if you talked to Rodney Kendall, who was at the scene, if he talked to Dallas Lip, the paramedic, who was at the scene, they did not see those articles of clothing around Keith's body. So where did Officer Levereid and or Detective Beasley get the clothing that my mom recognized and that Keith left the house in?

I can't get a straight answer. His car was parked a quarter of a mile away from where his body was found. And I did a video. It's online. It's on YouTube. It's called Walk with Keith. I walked from the area from where his car was parked to where his body was found. His car was parked at the clubhouse.

And Montgomery County Police want me to believe that my brother parked his car at the clubhouse and walked a quarter of a mile through our neighborhood, away from our house, carrying a 40-foot rope, two-four pack of wine cooler, a duff bag full of tapes, a change of clothes. But he walked through the neighborhood. He, where he, his body was found, there was so many parking spaces, empty parking spaces, unreserved parking spaces. He could have parked 20 feet from where his body was found. And nobody thought that would be suspicious that he would be walking through the area looking

like that. Mary also realized that Keith wasn't even actually hanging in these photographs. He was almost sitting down and his feet were touching the ground. As Lieutenant Lipp had noted, the tree Keith was hanging from was only about four. to six inches in diameter and was hardly sufficient to support the weight of the body as the tree had bent over so much that Keith's feet were on the ground. It looked more like he was propped up against the tree than hanging from it. Mary also noticed that there were leaves and dirt on the back of Keith's shirt like he had been lying on his back, which did not match up with his position

at all. The reason we mentioned earlier that most reports online, even Merrick Cooey's timeline of events, say that only Claudia went into the woods with EMTs, is that Keith's sister Sherry recently discovered that the unnamed man reportedly at the home went into the woods as well. He refused to identify Keith when asked by the authorities at the scene because he didn't want his name to be recorded in the police report and instead went to the nearby clubhouse and asked Rodney to go identify Keith. This seems to refer to the condo complex as clubhouse or rec room, but there are two country clubs very near the scene as well. In photos from the crime scene, you can see a man, believed to be the unnamed man mentioned in report standing there, shirtless. Many people

online have mentioned how out of places man looks. It's also interesting to see a shirtless man near Keith's body when you know that Keith wasn't wearing his own shirt and instead was wearing someone else's. Rodney Cadell, who had been allowed to identify Keith's body at the scene, contacted Mary with information. He claimed that before Keith died, a few people, mostly African-American males, who he said, looked shady, had pulled up in a car asking Rodney where Keith was. Rodney thought this was odd because Keith's male friends were mostly white. A few days after this, Mark Finley had also asked Rodney where Keith was. It seemed like he really wanted to find him.

Rodney told Mark, just as he had told the car full of people, that he hadn't seen him and he didn't know where he was. In August 1992, Mark Finley died in a bicycle accident when he was apparently thrown from his bike around 5 a.m. after the front wheel of the bike came off and he hit a curb bumping his head and he bled to death. This accident happened in Wheaton, Maryland, less than 10 miles from the wooded area where Keese body was discovered. Paramedics who responded first thought that Mark had been hit by a car because of how much blood was at the scene and how much damage had been done to his body.

Some witnesses thought the damage looked like he had been hit in the face with a baseball bat. But this case, like Keese, was never investigated and remains closed. This is the same man, threatened in the letter that was. was sent to Keith's mother Mary, the same man who sent a note to Mary saying that he wanted to talk to her. Now he was dead. And if he knew anything about Keith's death, he took his secrets to the great. Mary's car where she kept the note with Mark's name was broken into and the note was taken. It seemed as though someone had wanted the note and knew exactly where Mary kept it. For a long time, Mary is very respectful, calm and polite.

when trying to find out about Keith's death. But her patients grew thin, and she demanded that Keith's case be reopened and investigated thoroughly, as it should have been in the first place. Investigators, although very surprised that she had the evidence that she did have in her possession, decided to work with her.

Mary believed that the only real reason for their attitude change was, as she put it, one of trying to ease her mind and prevent her from stirring up trouble. A 1993 article in the Washington Post mentions that Cleo Warren offered a $5,000 reward for information about his son's death after Mary received the envelope full of photos. Assistant State's attorney Matthew Campbell called the investigation done by the Montgomery Police Department into Keith's death, poor and sloppy, but did not call for the case

to be reopened. A group called the Chatter, Laughter, and Mingling Society, or Clams raised the thousands of dollars. it took to have Keith's body exhumed, autopsied, and analyzed by independent forensic pathologists. On May 26, 1994, Isidore Mahalcas, a forensic pathologist, conducted an autopsy on Keith's body

at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It was his opinion that the scene investigation and the handling of the body immediately afterward was inappropriate and not in accordance with accepted standards of a good medical legal investigation system. Also troubling was that multiple pathologists didn't believe that Keith had died from asphyxiation or hanging, but instead believed that he either inhaled or ingested a toxin or poison. The toxicology results showed very high levels of trichlorathane or TCE

and dichlorothane or DCE, as well as lower levels of the chemicals xylene, ethyl benzene, and toline in Keith's blood, brain, liver, kidneys, and muscles. Dr. Mahalcos believed that the results indicated Keith would have been at least unconscious, if not near death, at the time of his hang. The chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland disputed the conclusions of these experts and claimed that the chemicals found were due to the embalming process. But according to Dr. Mahalchus, those substances aren't usually found in embalming fluids. But since the Warren family never even had the chance to ask for an autopsy for Keith, and thus there were no toxicological reports before the embalming process. It's impossible to know with absolute certainty.

The toxicology report noted that arsenic was found in Keese, blood, and liver. The report specifically states that although the level of arsenic was higher than expected, it is, quote, without toxicological significance. According to Mary, five independent pathologists, examined and tested Keith's remains, while none of them could say whether or not the chemicals were taken voluntarily or put into his system by someone who wanted him dead, they all agreed without question. Physically, there was no way Keith could have hanged himself. On February 23rd, 1996, Unsolved Mysteries ran an episode featuring Keith's case, resulting in new tips. One tip was from a woman in Alabama who said that she was the one who had reached.

redress Keith in his unfamiliar clothes. She didn't expand on why Keith was not wearing any clothes or where his clothes went. But it proved to marry that Keith wasn't alive when he was hoisted up against the tree. According to Keith's sister Sherry, the caller gave her name as Kim Wilson. And it's her belief that this lead wasn't followed up on by police. In 1999, state attorney Doug Gansler convened a grand jury to decide what to do with Keith's case. Keith's family was unaware and was never called for any testimony. According to Sherry Warren, Gansler simply notified them afterward that the grand jury could not reach a decision as to the manner of death.

To them, it was a slap in the face to not even make Keith's family aware of what was going on until it was over. For another decade, Mary Cooey wondered what happened to her son on May 23, 2009. She passed away, never getting the answers that she hoped for. The years following Keith's death were understandably hard for Mary in every way that you could imagine. 1992, after we got the pictures, my mom did a fundraiser. My mom actually had to file for bankruptcy. This is white her, it wiped her emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. Since then, though, it has been Keith's sister Sherry, who has fought to keep her brother's case alive,

demanding that his death be reclassified, undetermined, or a homicide, and thoroughly investigated. Cleo Warren has publicly stated he wished his daughter would go on with her life so that Keith could rest in peace. But Sherry has no such plans. And where her mom had tried to stay friendly and chipper with the people that might have the answers, thinking that you could catch more flies with honey rather than vinegar, Sherry's the opposite. She's the vinegar. She's been aggressive in trying to get to the truth about her brother's death. Up until 2009, I didn't get in my mother's way. I let her do her and how she wanted to handle this. Because she really genuinely thought the Montgomery County Police Department, the state of Maryland, the city of Silver Spring, the Montgomery County Council, Congressmen, you name it.

She even wrote the fucking Janorino. She tried to play nice with them and tried to be put on the pretty face with the articulate verbiage that was non-inteminating, thinking that that was going to work. When she passed away, gloves are off because that's not me and you're not getting that. They have taken advantage of my mother's weakness for her loss of her child, and they have dug in their heels trying to perpetuate this lie that my brother put himself on this tree because they don't want to investigate Detective Beasley. And I don't know why.

And maybe there's some other things going on. And maybe once this comes out and is exposed, that maybe other families will come forward. But it's really crazy to me if all of this factual information is given to me, given to you, because in my meeting in 2020 with Chief Jones, I said to him, I can show. you factually, scientifically and medically how he didn't do it. Show me how he did. And you know what I got? A two-step and tap dance from that man about how my brother got on that tree.

In 2011, Sherry contacted Dr. Muhammad Ali al-Biati, a pathologist, and she asked him to review the findings of the 1994 exhumation and autopsy. His analysis found that Keith had ingested the chemicals we discussed about one to two hours before he died, likely mixed with alcoholic drinks. Alcohol also increases the rate of absorption of TCE and DCE, which could explain how so much was found in Keith's system. Dr. Albaidi believes that the cause of Keith's death was the ingestion of these chemicals, which are usually found in things like paint thinners. The specific makeup of the chemicals found, actually the lack of certain additives and stabilizers, suggested that whatever Keith ingested, it was likely used as

a cleaner for photographic film. Paint thinner may bring to mind images of someone huffing chemicals to get high. But according to the autopsy, Keese's upper respiratory mucosa did not show evidence of irritation and congestion. They indicate he inhaled solvents prior to his death. It was very unlikely that he had been exposed to these chemicals through his skin, since the absorption of these chemicals from the skin is slow. He would have had to drink these chemicals.

Sherry expanded on this for us and why it may be such a big, in Keith's case. In his belief, the chemicals were introduced into Keith's system by the wine coolers. Because, again, the highest concentration were in his brain and liver, meaning they circulated in his body. He drank them. So whoever drugged him did it intentionally. And then when he drank them, he threw up.

His body became overwhelmed. And he threw up and defecated on himself. Hence the reason why they had to change his clothes. That's where the change of clothing come in because he either threw up or he desicated on himself. And so they had to get rid of that. It's still mind-boggling for me to believe that for them to put him on the tree like that, it was just that disturbs me because I do believe it was somebody he was familiar

with. I do believe I'm going to use air quotes. He might have called him air quotes friends. It's just disturbing. Both of Albiotti and Mihalikas both believe they were in the deuce and assistant by the wine coolers. So he drank them. So whoever had intention of harming him put them in the wine coolers. Dr. Mihalika said that the levels of the chemicals in 92, 93 were so high, he couldn't have imagined what they were back in 1986. And he said Keith wouldn't have had the mental or

physical capabilities of tying a rope around two trees. He couldn't even thought about it, let alone walk over to the tree because the drugs, the chemicals would have took them out. is whoever had access to a business license that was able to obtain these chemicals. Because Keith was embalmed, his stomach contents and what was left inside his intestines was removed, which meant that it was not possible to take samples from the stomach and the rest of the gastrointestinal tract to perform toxicological analysis. Being able to properly analyze the stomach contents would have allowed investment. skaters to pin down exactly what Keith drank or exactly what he did not drink. There was edema or swelling found in Keith's lungs as well as aspirated material in his trachea

and larynx. This led Dr. Albiadi to believe that Keith had ingested a large amount of these chemicals, which caused him to vomit. This could be a reason that Keith's body was redressed after death. The presence of vomit would have meant that his death was less likely to be clearly ruled a suicide. According to Dr. Albaotti's report, it is likely that Keese body was washed after death and his clothes were changed because they became dirty with vomit and possibly with fecal materials due to the lethal dose of solvents mixed with alcohol. There were empty wine coolers in the woods near Kees' body. Keith did like to drink them, but it doesn't appear that any testing was ever done to determine

who those wine-coolers belonged to. These could have been the alcoholic drinks ingested with the chemicals. A full autopsy and medical exam at the time of Keith's death would have possibly answered many of these questions, but the rush to conclusion and speedy way in which Keith's body were sent to the funeral home and embalmed, all without his family's consent made that impossible. More of one thing we haven't talked about yet is who would have sent Mary, Keith's crime scene material, and why would they have warned Mary of Mark's impending murder?

Did someone want Mark's death to be prevented or were they taunting Mary? Why give Mary the crime scene photos? Was it to try and help her uncover more of the truth about Keith's death or to hurt her? By burning the image of her deceased son into her mind, we don't know the status of Laurenne Berman, the last that Keith's family knew of him, he and his family were still living in Aspen Hill and he was safe and sound. Whatever the case, you would have to think that the person who sent those photos had some kind of official access to crime scene materials. Maybe someone working within the police department. Recently on Reddit, Sherry mentioned that she found an entry in her mom's notes. That indicated Keith had been harassed shortly before he died.

During the summer, Mary had been traveling and noticed the phone was busy so often she would ask the operator to cut into the line and check on Keith, but no one was on the line. It was just off the hook. When Mary asked Keith about this, he said he was being harassed, but didn't say anything further. Sherry also mentioned that in 2012, she was told that Keith used a slingshot method to hang himself, which she does not believe because he would have had to been able to determine the exact amount of rope to tie around both trees to give him enough tension that when he dropped to his knees, the force would sling him back up. And this would have been after drinking eight wine coolers and changing his clothes, all in the darkness of night.

Chip Wynn, whose home the original 911 call came from about Keith's death, has apparently since died of a drug overdose. Some people have theorized that perhaps Keith was at Chip's house, getting high and accidentally overdosed. maybe that Chip could have panicked and covered it up. If that was the case, then why would they have decided to hang Keith, making it look like a suicide instead of just moving him somewhere else? And why did Claudia call 911 if they didn't want anyone to know Keith had been there? But then again, there's no evidence that Keith overdosed on any drugs. And I think people likely are just looking for theories that might help explain Keith's death. In April 2018, Sherry was told by Montgomery County police that Keith's case had been reopened.

But just months later, in September 2018, the department reversed itself and informed her that they had never reopened the case. But that's not all that happened in 2018. So I was told in 2018 it was policy and procedure for Montgomery County that at the time, if it was deemed necessary or cool by the coroner and lead that they could send bodies directly to funeral homes. So I requested a copy under the FOI MPI, Maryland Public Information Act, a copy of the policy procedure handbook from 1986. I was told in writing that there is not one electronic or hard copy of the policy procedure handbook from 1986 in the state of Maryland, because they supposedly destroy each copy once they're updated. So I can't even go back and verify that.

In April 2021, Montgomery County Councilman Hans Reimer called for an independent investigation into the death of Keith Warren. Still, as of the time of this recording, the cause of death on Keith's death certificate reads, suicide by hanging. All Sherry is hoping for is that the cause can at the very least be changed to undetermined. For what it's worth, the state of Maryland now requires an autopsy be performed on all teenagers and young adults in cases of suicide, which seems so sensible, but sadly, was not enforced when Keith died. Today, 35 years after Keith's death, a lot of things trouble Sherry about her brother's case. Much of it's centering around the early investigation led by Detective Beasley and Officer Leverett. She discussed some of those issues that are still troubling. So now let's backtrack on Detective Beasley.

Detective Beasley has now used information from a third-party unnamed, undocumented, unrelated source to justify classification of suicide. He then releases the body to the funeral home of his choice, which embalmed the body, prior to notification of the family. He then takes the clothing, because that's going to come up in late in this conversation, the clothing that Keith has on the tree is not the clothing that they gave back to us in 1986. So where's the clothing that keeps? left the house and my mother saw him leave the house in. And now the tree is destroyed and gone.

So there's four pieces of evidence right there that was in the hand of Detective Beasley that are no longer around. I'm not, I'm going to mention the news. And it's in paperwork that my mother had, thank God my mother took notes and wrote everything down and made quadruplicates of everything because in her notes, she asked the chief of police from 1986 to 1990 to get the news back from them. and they held on to that news until it somehow mysteriously disappeared. So there is no news. So you don't have the news, you don't have an autopsy, you don't have a body to, well, the body's involved, you don't have a tree, you don't have the clothing, every piece of evidence that

possibly could lead us to some answers as to how keep out in a tree, detect the baby, somehow either distort or may disappear. And then on top of that, the system of justice in Maryland is not a system that works for and the best interest of Keith Warren and my family. Because the coroner on his report stated, and this is, everything is online, by the way. What I'm saying is, I can back it up. I'm not just putting shit out there. The coroner on his report said that he spoke to victim sisters.

Sisters said he was missing for a week. First of all, Keith only had one sister. I was a minor and I wasn't in the state of Maryland at the time. So who did he talk to? Again, you have these mysterious people showing up giving information that the state of Maryland and their people that they employed are using to justify a black man shung up on a tree and nobody thinks that there's nothing weird about this. And the coroner going in relation to him, my mom had always said the corner was never on the scene.

And if, in fact, he was, why is it that in the box where it says pronounced its officer leverage name, not the coroner's name? They were so sloppy with how this information was put out there that they got missed, they got missed dates. Dates are messed up and don't match from the medical examiner to the coroner to the police report. Everything is crisscrossed and wrong. This is how sloppy this is. And my only ask, and this is my mother's ask until she passed and 09 was to reclassify this case as undetermined and to update his death certificate as undetermined. And I don't think that's a crazy ask. If you have any information about the death and possible murder of Keith Warren, you can email info at the keith Warren Justice Foundation.org.

For more info and any updates on Keith's case, be sure to visit. visit the Keith Warren Justice site.com. The website is maintained by the Keith Warren Justice Foundation, hosts many of the documents relevant to the case, including the original police report. Sherry has the weight of the world on her shoulders when it comes to fighting for justice for her brother. We asked her if there is any help that she could still use

from the public, perhaps even from our listeners. I need someone who knows constitutional law in Maryland. because I feel like Montgomery County is not going to hear me until I file a lawsuit, and they're going to push me to that, but I don't know constitutional law. I need someone who has some constitutional law background that can give me grounds on which I can file a lawsuit that somehow, some way, gets past the statute of limitations in the state of Maryland. Because at this point, I'm getting hit with the wall of statute of limitations when it comes to filing lawsuits. And to dust my knowledge, the only thing I would have been able to file a suit would be is

civil rights were violated, right? But you have seven years in the time of death to file that. So of course, we'll weigh out that window. So morph as we wrap up this case, obviously it has been heartbreaking. For Sherry, it was heartbreaking for her mother while she was still alive. They have both fought to learn the truth about what happened to Keith. I do find this a very mysterious death. I think when you look at some of,

of the facts that we've talked about, you would have to say there's some mystery here. There are questions that have not been answered. I think a lot of those questions result from the fact that, you know, things happen very quickly, right? The suicide determination was made very quickly. His body was taken to the funeral home quickly and bombed quickly. So, you know, I think a lot of those answers. that possibly could have been gleaned weren't because there seems to have been a rush. More if I also think that it seems as though some of the factors surrounding the scene of where

Keith's body were found were kind of dismissed. They weren't looked at as being suspicious when I think they should have been. Yeah. A lot of people might say quickly, oh, this is a grieving family that does. want to accept that Keith took his own life and they're just sort of in denial. But it's really hard to just accept that when you see so much strange stuff going on. As you mentioned, right from the beginning in the investigation, right from the beginning, you have the family not having a say, as you mentioned, in what happens to Keith's body about going to the

funeral home being embalmed. That doesn't happen. No autopsy before that happens. So many things could have been answered. Then they want to go back and look at the rope, the noose, the tree. All those things are the key elements that they could go back to and have experts look at. It can no longer be investigated now or examined because they're missing or destroyed. So it's very troubling. you see a young African-American man with a noose around his neck, automatically it brings up some terrible things to a lot of people. And just the slight chance that there's more to it than a suicide should have been at least looked into. And I think it's clear from everything that we've talked about.

They just said, let's get this over with. It's a suicide. And that's that. And whether that was because they were sloppy or, lazy or covering up if you want to go down that road for something or someone. I don't know, but it just seems like there's a lot more than meets the eye here. And there was some big failures to really see if any other clues could have been developed here. Yeah, no, I agree. I don't know exactly the reason for everything, the way it happened. But it's hard not to question it and

want to kind of dive into it and to think that, as you said, there is more than meets the eye here in this case. Thanks goes out in this episode to Sherry Warren for her insights into her brother's case. Our conversation with her was an hour long and obviously couldn't fit all that into this episode. But if you're a Patreon supporter, you can head over to Patreon and listen to that in its entirety. Thanks again also goes out to Jules over it'll me that for allowing us to use the portion of her interview. Finally, thanks to Sunny Landon for a right. writing and research assistance. If you love the show and haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star

rating. Keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. Some more if that is it for our episode on Keith Warren.

our first episode of 2022. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.