Law&Crime Sidebar - Teen Dies Mysteriously During Homecoming Prank

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This is a story that starts with a simple prank, and it ends with a tragedy that no one can currently explain. Haddon Kelly, a beloved high school athlete golfer, was found unresponsive during Homecoming Week. And now he is dead and it is not clear why. We bring on forensic death investigator Joseph Scott Morgan to try to understand what may be going on. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber.

Starting point is 00:00:41 What I'm about to tell you is sad as it is just so strange. 17-year-old high school student Haddon Kelly, a rising golf phenom, is dead. And I will tell you, it is not clear why. Now, we're going to get into what we know based on the reporting and then try to figure out what we don't know. But this past Monday, the Daily Mail reports that Haddon was playing a prank with friends out in Dodge County, Georgia, T-Ping a yard, you know, throwing toilet paper all around, when all of a sudden it was reported a friend finds him unresponsive at 9 a.m., collapsed in this yard. And now Haddon is actually, by the way, the great nephew of the Dodge County coroner, Joe Smith. Smith told WGXA that this was part of homecoming activities. Says it's not clear what happened that hadn't reportedly died at the scene.

Starting point is 00:01:34 Now his body has been sent for an autopsy. It is weird. It is really, really weird. We do not have a lot of details about what's going on here. Before we even get into what could have happened, I just want to take a second to tell you a little bit more about this guy, okay? This young man was a serious, serious golfer. He worked at Dodge County Golf Club.

Starting point is 00:01:55 He played for the Dodge County High School golf team. The team and coaches, they released a statement on Facebook that said he was our top performing golfer and always finished earlier than most of his teammates. He always stayed till each team member finished. He could have left as most of the time he finished first against the competition. It wasn't about him. He stayed to support his team. He wanted the team to succeed. And Smith doubled down on this saying to double.

Starting point is 00:02:23 WGXA. He played every day, and I believe if that were something he wanted to do, he would have gone pro because he was that good. Dodge County High School released a statement on Facebook saying there are no words to express the sadness that our DCHS family feels for the loss of Junior Haddon Kelly. Please join us in prayer for his family, friends, and our DCHS family, gone from our sight, but never from our hearts. And you can feel how special and how loved he was. So again, what happened? I want to bring in Forensic Death Investigator from Jacksonville State University and host of the Body Baggs podcast, Joseph Scott Morgan. Joseph, so good to see you. Always great seeing you.

Starting point is 00:03:05 Thank you so much. Thoughts? You bet. Thoughts on this? Yeah, the circumstances are certainly odd, bizarre, as a matter of fact, because you've got a 17-year-old kid who's obviously an athlete. probably in pretty good physical condition. You take a look at this young man. It looks like the picture of health.

Starting point is 00:03:26 He's long, lean. You know, externally, you know, you don't see anything that would give you pause to say, you know, this person's got some kind of health condition. He's not like morbidly obese or anything like this. There's even images, these still images of him swinging his golf club. You know, he's got this beautiful back swing, very long swing. You can tell he's very practiced. Spends probably a lot of time on the range. And I've been to Dodge County, Georgia, Eastman, Georgia, that area.

Starting point is 00:03:53 It's hot. It is hot, hot, hot during the summertime. We've already made it through summer. You know he's been playing golf all summer. He's been in a couple of tournaments. I think my big question as a death investigator would be what kind of symptomology had he presented with? Because, you know, you think about you're going to go out at 9 o'clock in the morning to go toilet paper homes, which back in my day, that was done at night. But again, part of homecoming festivities, apparently, according to the.

Starting point is 00:04:20 the authorities. Did any of his friends see anything odd? Was he short of breath? Was he complaining of a headache, chest pains, nausea, particularly? Had he thrown up prior to them getting together, there's so much that we don't know at this point in time. And, of course, the autopsy at this point in time, which I would imagine is being conducted by the state medical examiner's office in Georgia, it's going to be left pending. Unless they find some kind of physical anomaly that is so glaring or some kind of trauma, which we haven't heard anything about that yet, we're going to be waiting on examination of microscopic tissues, and we're going to be waiting on toxicology.

Starting point is 00:04:58 How many times have you and I talked about toxicology over the years, Jesse? And that's going to be a big key here. Let me ask you something. Have you ever sat through a meeting and you thought at the end of it, wait, what did we just decide after all of that? Maybe you sat through a really good discussion, but then you lost track of what the action items were later on. Look, I've been there.

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Starting point is 00:06:21 to try the Plaud Notep Pro. So right now, you can get 10% off of Plaud's other features, the NotePin, with code Jesse. Just click the link below or scan the QR code on screen. So let's talk about the autopsy. So how does it work? What is the full examination look like? When you say pending, what do you mean? And when could we actually get results? Well, I think probably what's referred to as the gross dissection, which is where you have the remains in front of you, you do an external and an internal examination, and we refer to it as examining the body with the unaided eye, okay? And what that means is, is there any kind of diagnoses that the forensic pathologists can come up with? Like if they're taking a look at the

Starting point is 00:07:03 heart, they would look at the valves in the heart, particularly with a young person to see if there's any kind of malformation in the valves. Wanting to know also things like, is the heart muscle atrophied in any way, you know, kind of worn and weak? Is there wall thickening in the heart? That's a sign of hypertension many times. And, of course, they're going to look for standard things like heart disease. You know, you begin to think of a 17-year-old with heart disease. In my wildest dreams, I've been trying to think about this, is he predisposed to some kind of genetic anomaly? And it's all going to center around the heart, I think probably around the brain as well. But that examination is not going to be complete until they can tell.

Starting point is 00:07:43 take those tissue samples that they recover at autopsy. Remember how I said with the unaided eye, and what they will do is they will fix those samples, place them onto a microscopic slide, and is a histological examination. And the pathologist will actually sit in a microscope and take a look through the scope at the tissues as well. You'll have extensive tissue sampling throughout the body to try to understand this. And to try to appreciate, is there something that has been missed developmentally? Because he's 17, Jesse. You know, I mean, he's not that far removed from mom taking the pediatrician.

Starting point is 00:08:18 Were there any indications early on? Is there something that they may have missed? You know, one of the first things that came to mind for me because he's kind of long and lean. I was thinking, well, is this kid suffering from Marfan syndrome, which is something we see with people that are really tall. They even think that, you know, Abraham Lincoln may have had Marfans. You get heart anomalies with that. And there's certain physical characteristics that you see, particularly with the fingers.

Starting point is 00:08:40 and there are heart abnormalities that are associated with that. And I don't know that that's the case. But everything is going to be explored here. I think one of my big questions, I've heard a couple of things here that as far as the timeline goes, they're kind of interesting. I'd read one report where they said that he was deceased at the scene and found by a friend. And then the other was that he was removed from the scene and taken to the emergency room and pronounced there. I saw that mixed reporting too, yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:10 Yeah. And I want to understand that timeline because, Jesse, that's very important when you're talking about something where you don't have obvious trauma. You have to understand what was going on with him. And also, when they found him, I want to know, was he just not breathing? Were there any color changes in his body? And the reason I say that, there's one obvious thing that you can kind of look at and see if somebody is in what's referred to as congestive failure. It essentially goes from like the nipple line up to the top of the head. People will actually take on kind of a dark. purpleish color, and that's an indication of congestive failure. You've got a problem with your heart and your lungs. You're not processing like you should be. So there's so much here to explore. And as a death investigator, I got to tell you, I'm going to be asking some very specific questions. I want to know what he had ingested that morning because 17-year-olds just don't fall over deceased. We hear about them in the news. Do you know why we hear about them? It's the same reason we're talking right now. It just doesn't happen. That's what puts it on the radar. It's such an anomaly. I want to know. if he's taken on any kind of supplements in the morning. I want to know if maybe he's on an energy drink that could play into it. You never know. Nine o'clock in the morning. You're running around the neighborhood. You're T-Ping houses and this sort of thing. You're with your buddies. Anything that he might have had in a system, and of course, that's all going to come back relative to toxicology. And they will also be looking, I imagine, for allergies and toxins as well. I imagine if that's so clear to determine based either on toxicology reports or a preliminary examination.

Starting point is 00:10:44 Yeah, yeah, it would be. You know, well, first off, you got to go back in time relative to this young man's history. I kind of, you know, talked about that a little bit. Had he been followed for his entire life by physician developmentally, was there anything? And also, I think important to try to understand is over the past few weeks, has anything changed relative to his appetite, his activity. This kid is really into golf. So if you've got to, let's just say he's become lethargic or kind of listless,

Starting point is 00:11:12 you know, he's complaining of being tired, for instance, or fatigued. Did any of that symptomology precede now, what we're seeing now? That's an important question to ask, because his diet changed at all. And, you know, there are those outlier things, too, that I'm still, because it's a death investigation. I'm going to want to know if he had ingested something, did anybody have, access to anything he was drinking or anything he was eating. That's all on the table at this point. You have to consider this. How expansive does a death investigation go? Would your job be looking at interviews or interviewing people that were around him that day? Days leading up,

Starting point is 00:11:51 would it be looking at surveillance for the gym? How extensive does it go? Oh, my lord. Yeah, it's going to be it's going to be dense, particularly the data is going to be dense, particularly in a case like this because you're, you know, when you and I cover cases that are involving very specific trauma, Jesse, we've got some pretty obvious answers there. You're literally starting out with Bupkas here. You don't have anything as far as detailed physical information or medical information about lifestyle and all those things. So you're having to build out a case, and I'm not talking about from a police standpoint, I'm talking about from my community as the medical legal authorities. mentioned his great uncle is the coroner. Well, he's part of that machinery, you know, as far as involving himself in the death investigation, you're going to go back, you're going to go to his

Starting point is 00:12:40 treating physicians. If he has a family physician that he's been visiting, I'm sure with every single kid that I'm aware of that is going into a sport, okay, you have to have a medical examination. What was found there is it something that they were doing every single year and what did that consist of? I'm going to interview all of his friends, particularly those that were either traveling in a vehicle with him, that had spent time with him that morning. Of course, you've got to go back to the parents. A real fantastic snapshot is the last 24 hours before he was found unconscious or deceased in that yard. I want to know what was going on with him prior to all of that. You know, what had occurred relative to interactions with people,

Starting point is 00:13:23 complaints of illness, those sorts of things. All that stuff's going to have to be unpacked. And this is going to be a very involved investigation. When will the public, and more importantly, when will his family get answers as to what happened? It's going to be a slow rollout with talks unless they can talk to the GBI who would be handling this case, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, because the state medical examiner is housed within that organization. If they can get, like, toxicology bumped up to the front of the line, because everybody's going to be curious about that. if they are not seeing anything with the unaided eye, and they're just kind of going into this investigation, wanting to know what was going on at a chemical level, were there any toxins, were there any drugs? You talked about allergies. I think that's going to be very important,

Starting point is 00:14:12 allergic reactions, things of this nature. They're going to have to consider every bit of that data. And this case in particular, it would not surprise me, Jesse, to see them get maybe a cardiologist involved in it, you know, as a consult to have them take a look at the heart. Also, perhaps a neuropathologist, if they suspect anything was going on with the brain, they'll bring in that consultation because they want to make sure that all the boxes are ticked here because you get one shot at it. You get one shot at, you know, doing it right the first time, and that's it. And so they're going to cover a lot of territory with those. Before we wrap things up, a little inside baseball. So I helped to write a lot of these episodes for

Starting point is 00:14:53 sidebar. I wrote today's. And as I was writing it, I barely could find information about this. There were like a few articles. They were repeating a lot of the same information, bare bones information. Is it strange to you? We don't have a lot of information right now. No indication about what happened. It's like this was a beloved athlete. He was doing a prank. He's dead. That's all we know. Like there's no further explanation. Is that strange to you? Not necessarily. However, I think that it has to grab the appetite of the media in particular. The closest large city to this location is essentially Macon. You go down to Macon, Georgia, and they've got multiple news outlets there. There's a pretty prominent newspaper there, I think, at the Macon Telegraph. I would keep my eye on those news feeds to see if this elicits any kind of reaction from the news media there in that area because they could really do a deep dive. And I think it's really important because, look, we've got a 17-year-old high school student, Jesse, that is deceased. I think that that's valuable information to try to understand and educate the public

Starting point is 00:16:02 about what's going on here because I don't know if I'm a parent, you know, and we've got a very healthy, robust young man that has now passed on. I want to know, is there anything I need to be worried about relative to the safety of my child, just trying to understand behaviors that we're going on. They're all associated with this. Yeah, there's kind of a silence right here right now. I would think that reporters that occupy that space down there in Middle Georgia that they would really get on the phone and get on the street, go out there and ask questions, talk to the kids that he went to school with, you know, talk to the teachers, talk to coaches, and really ask the GBI the direct questions as well as his uncle, the coroner's office in

Starting point is 00:16:40 Dodge County, Georgia. Well, I just hope that whoever is investigating this and analyzing this is as thorough and well-researched and experienced as you, because you are a general. I'm Joseph. Thank you so much for coming on explaining what we should be thinking about. You bet, Jesse. My pleasure. Yeah, of course, really sad case. You can check Joseph out on body bags. Thank you again, my friend. Appreciate it. You bet. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcasts. You can follow me on X or Instagram. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus.

Starting point is 00:17:30 Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Law&Crime Sidebar - Teen Dies Mysteriously During Homecoming Prank

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