Murder: True Crime Stories - UNSOLVED: The School Gym Murder 2

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

After years of unanswered questions, Kendrick Johnson’s family finally convinced federal investigators to reopen the case. But what they uncovered only deepened the mystery. From missing organs and altered surveillance footage to high-profile lawsuits and allegations of FBI corruption, the fight for justice became bigger than anyone imagined. In Part 2, Carter Roy unravels the complex web of investigations, legal battles, and conspiracies surrounding Kendrick’s death — and the Johnson family’s decade-long quest for truth. Even after three autopsies and multiple investigations, the question remains: what really happened to Kendrick Johnson? If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder True Crime Stories to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios 🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Killer Minds, Crime House Daily and Crimes and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow me on Social Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Crime House. Losing a loved one is never easy, especially when their death seems to defy explanation. But when you're desperately searching for answers, it can take over your life, and in some cases even tear families apart. But for the Johnson family of Valdosta, Georgia, the loss of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson united them. They had one shared goal to find justice for the boy they loved. The family was relentless in their search for the truth, doing interviews, protesting outside

courtrooms, and making sure no one in Valdosta forgot Kendrick's name. But as the investigation dragged on without an end in sight, the Johnson's became convinced there was a cover-up at play. And if the authorities had their way, Kendrick's killer would never be held accountable. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories,

the Crime House original powered by Pave Studios that comes out every Tuesday and Thursday. Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Murder True Crime Stories and subscribe to Crime House Plus, on Apple Podcasts for ad-free early access to each two-part series. And if you can't get enough true crime, go search and follow Crime House Daily. Our team's twice a day show bringing you breaking cases, updates, and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that are happening right now. Please be advised that this episode includes sensitive content involving the death of a minor

and graphic medical findings. Please listen with care. This is the second of two episodes on the mysterious death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson in 2013. Last time, we talked about the day Kendrick's body was found inside a rolled-up gym mat at his high school in Valdosta, Georgia. The police ruled that his death was a freak accident, but Kendrick's family wasn't convinced. They kept pushing for a second investigation, and thanks to their efforts, U.S. Attorney Matthew Moore, reopened the case. Today, we'll cover the next phase of the investigation into Kendrick's death and the legal battles that followed. As federal officials re-examined the evidence,

the Johnson family became convinced that local authorities had covered up the truth, that Kendrick was murdered, and as the years passed, the Johnsons began to wonder if they'd ever get closure, all that and more coming up. Canada's Wonderland is bringing the holiday magic this season with Winterfest on select nights now through January 3rd. Step into a winter wonderland filled with millions of dazzling lights, festive shows, rides, and holiday treats. Plus, Coca-Cola is back with Canada's kindest community. celebrating acts of kindness nationwide with a chance at 100,000 donation for the winning community and a 2026 holiday caravan stop.

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What will you do with your yes? Get the yes you've been waiting for at Capital One.ca.ca.com slash yes. Terms and conditions apply. On January 11, 2013, a group of students found the body of their classmate, 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson, during gym class at Lowndes High School. He was upside down, trapped inside a rolled-up gym mat. The discovery shocked the community of Valdosta, Georgia. Kendrick was the youngest of five siblings, a star athlete, and well-liked at school.

His death wasn't just unusual. It was horrific, and terrified parents wanted to know how on earth could this have happened at Lowndes. A second shock came when the autopsy results arrived. According to the coroner, Kendrick died from asphyxia. His death wasn't a murder. it was a bizarre accident. Detectas believed Kendrick died while trying to retrieve a pair of Adida sneakers. It was common for kids at the school to hide their gym shoes inside the rolled-up mats.

The police believed Kendrick dove face first into a vertical mat to fish out his sneakers, got stuck, and suffocated. But Kendrick's family didn't believe the police. And a few months later, they paid for a second independent autopsy. The new pathologist, Dr. William Anderson, said it was impossible that Kendrick had died from asphyxiation. Instead, he found bruising on Kendrick's jaw, damaged to his chest, and internal bleeding in his neck. These were all consistent with deliberate blunt force trauma. And according to Dr. Anderson, Kendrick's death was no accident. Someone had killed him.

After the second autopsy, the Johnson family pressured the state to reopen Kendrick's case. Because Kendrick was black, they felt police hadn't done their due diligence, and the U.S. attorney for the district, Matthew Moore, agreed. On October 31, 2013, 10 months after Kendrick's death, the Johnson family was sitting outside the Lowndes County Courthouse. This wasn't new for them. they'd spent the better part of the year sitting on folding chairs on this same sidewalk. They came every weekday, armed with signs and slogans calling for justice for Kendrick.

Today, they watched a portable TV that was broadcasting live from inside the courthouse. On the screen, U.S. Attorney Matthew Moore addressed a crowd of reporters. He told them he would be launching a second inquiry. into the case. The first investigation had been handled by the sheriff's office. This time, Moore would bring out the big guns. He'd put together a task force of attorneys and federal investigators from the Department of Justice, the U.S. Marshal Service, and the Washington, D.C. police. They would follow the facts wherever they led and settle Kendrick's cause of death once and for all. The announcement felt like a huge victory for the Johnson family.

They hugged each other and cheered as Matthew Moore answered questions on the screen. Finally, all their advocacy had paid off. The first thing Moore's Task Force planned to do was re-interview almost 100 people. The list included Kendrick's family, friends, classmates, and the officers who originally investigated the case. Like the Lowndes County Sheriff's Department before them, the task force found only a few people of interest. By all accounts, Kendrick was a well-liked, all-American kid.

Not exactly the type to have enemies. But the team did find some people Kendrick had a bad history with. About a year before his death, Kendrick got into a fight with a football teammate. This was the student we mentioned last time, who we're calling William Clark. Well after the fight, which Kendrick apparently won, William's brother Sean told classmates that things weren't over between the two of them. Even Sean and William's father, who we're calling Scott, allegedly got involved. Kendrick's dad, Kenneth, claimed that Scott confronted Kendrick at school.

He reportedly invited Kendrick to his house for a rematch with his son. Scott denied that conversation ever took place, but Kenneth Johnson stood by the story. Kenneth also believed the local police had given the Clark's special treatment. Because Scott Clark was an FBI agent, Kenneth thought the authorities were letting his sons off easy. It was a loaded accusation, but the Johnsons weren't afraid of calling out the police. They thought the local authorities had decided early on that Kendrick died in a freak accident and that's why they didn't fully investigate other potential causes of death. Even worse, their official explanation didn't match the evidence.

Even if Kendrick had suffocated, the idea that he dove head first into the mat seemed ridiculous. Students told police that when they retrieve their gym shoes, they usually used. tipped the mats over or unrolled them. They never stuck their whole bodies inside of them. But Sheriff Chris Prine argued that Kendrick must have done just that. The day Kendrick died, 21 Jim Matts were standing upright, three deep against the wall. Kendrick's body was found in the middle row, surrounded by mats on all sides. Prine said the mats would have been too heavy for Kendrick to move on his own. That's why he dove inside for his shoes. Once he got stuck, he couldn't get out.

Even if he'd rocked the mat back and forth, the other heavy vertical mats had locked him in place. But the Johnson family didn't buy it. Kendrick's shoulders were 19 inches wide. But the police report stated the opening of the rolled-up mat only measured 14 inches. His body was found with at least one arm outstretched, meaning his shoulders could have squeezed inside,

But 14 inches was too tight for him to manage on his own. The Johnsons believed there was a simpler explanation that Kendrick's killer had rolled him up inside the mat. And there was another detail that Johnson's couldn't get past. The first medical examiner said that being upside down for so long had caused blood to rush to Kendrick's head. That's why there was blood dripping onto the floor. underneath the mat when he was discovered but the adidas shoe that was sitting on top of the puddle

of blood the one kendrick was supposedly trying to reach was completely clean kendrick's family argued this made no sense if kendrick was positioned right over the shoe the dripping blood should have soaked the adidas instead his blood had pooled on the floor first then it seemed like someone had placed the shoe on top of it. For the Johnson's, the implication was clear. Whoever had killed Kendrick had tried to stage the murder as an accident. The U.S. Attorney, Matthew Moore, took these accusations seriously. So his next step was to see if the first investigation had missed any other clues in the gym.

To figure that out, his task force needed to review the source. school's security cameras. These videos had been a problem since the start of the investigation. Each camera's individual timestamp was inaccurate, so it was difficult to make heads or tails of the timeline. One set of cameras spotted Kendrick entering the gym at 109 p.m. Another set captured the same movement, but marked it at 119 p.m. And there were other discrepancies, too. In November 2013, CNN examines, and the videos themselves, they hired a forensic video analyst to pick apart nearly 300 hours

of footage taken from 35 cameras. What the analyst found was shocking. The Lowndes County Sheriff's Department claimed the footage was raw and unedited. But the analysts discovered the videos were altered to make the image quality worse. Certain files were even corrupted, making them unwatchable and most damning, some footage was completely missing. There were four motion-activated cameras inside the gym that were partially working. These cameras should have been recording from the time the lights turned on in the morning until they were turned off at night, but somehow they were all missing about an hour of tape during the crucial time period just after Kendrick entered the gym.

It could have been just an odd coincidence. Perhaps there was no motion inside the gym during that period, but that didn't seem to make sense because other cameras positioned outside clearly showed seven other male students entering the gym during the missing hour. For the Johnson family and other skeptics, there was no doubt. Someone had tampered with the footage,

and the local police had turned a blind eye. With every new discovery, the Johnson family became even angrier. They already believed the police had let their son's killer get away with murder. But now they were starting to think something much darker was at play. They thought the incompetence may have been intentional, that the investigation wasn't just sloppy. It was a cover of. By June 2014, the second investigation into the death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was in full swing. But Kendrick's family wasn't willing to just sit by and wait for the results.

They believed there was a wide-ranging conspiracy to protect Kendrick's killer, and they wanted Valdasta officials to be held accountable. On July 28th, 2014, the Johnsons filed a wrongful death lawsuit. The suit claimed that Lowndes County Board of Education failed to maintain a functioning surveillance system. The suit also alleged that the board had ignored reports that Kendrick was being harassed by William Clark. Lawyers for the Board of Education denied the charges, but the legal battles were only just beginning. In August 2014, William's father, an FBI agent were calling Scott, filed a lawsuit of his own. He sued Ebony Magazine for defamation after they published an article about Kendrick's death.

Though the piece used pseudonyms, it connected his sons, William and Sean, with the investigation. The suit took aim at an anonymous email that was sent to the Lowndes County Sheriff, which Ebony had used as a source. The sender claimed that Kendrick slept with Sean Clark's girlfriend. Looking for revenge, Sean then killed him in a jealous rage. But the email wasn't reliable. The officers tracked down the anonymous sender and found that all of their claims were based on second-hand gossip. And two weeks before the Ebony article was published, the sender retracted the email entirely. Still, Scott alleged that because of the article, his son,

sons were harassed at school. He wanted to make it very clear that not only was the email false, but neither William nor Sean were anywhere near the gym when Kendrick died. William was on a bus to a wrestling tournament in another city, and Sean was in class on the other side of the school. As the case continued to make headlines, it seemed like everyone in Valda had an opinion about what happened to Kendrick, and even with several lawsuits floating around, accusations kept coming. At some point after the Ebony article went live, a man named Ryan Domek Hernandez

came forward to accuse the Clarks. He told the Johnson family that when he was at Sean's apartment, Sean said that William had killed Kendrick Johnson. According to Ryan, William struck Kendrick with a dumbbell while in the haze of a royd rage. But this accusation had its problems, too. Ryan said the conversation happened at Sean's apartment in Jacksonville, Florida, where he moved to after graduating from Lowndes in 2014 or 2015. But at the time he said they spoke, Sean was still apparently living in Baldosta.

It was another, he said, she said exchange, but it didn't end there. Two weeks after coming to the Johnsons with this information, Ryan was the one in hot water. At around 5.30 in the morning, a local woman woke to find a man trying to force his way into her home. She claimed she saw Ryan Domek Hernandez punched through her window and try to break in. Half an hour later, Ryan showed up at an emergency room with a bloody hand. He tried to register at the front desk under a fake name,

but an officer there recognized him. He was quickly arrested for trespassing. It seemed like a simple case of breaking and entering, but Kendrick's mother, Jackie, saw it differently. She told the press that Ryan had been silenced. After he accused Sean and William Clark, the police made up a crime to arrest him. It was all part of their scheme to cover up what happened to Kendrick.

By the beginning of 2015, the Johnsons were worried they would never get justice for Kendrick. So they decided to take matters into their own hands. In January 2015, two years after Kendrick's death, they filed a $100 million lawsuit. They named several of Kendrick's classmates, including the Clarks, the school superintendent, the Valdosta Police Chief, and the state. medical examiner. In total, they accused 38 local, state, and federal officials of covering up a homicide. But, as they'd come to expect, nothing in this case was easy. Because when they tried to file the suit in Lowndes County, all seven Superior Court judges recused themselves from the case. The judges said that they worked with the officials in question nearly every day. They

felt that hearing the suit would constitute a conflict of interest. To Kendrick's family, this smelled like more of the same corruption. The suit ended up being filed in a neighboring county, but if the Johnsons were hoping it would finally get their questions answered, they were sorely disappointed because by the summer of 2015, more than two years since Kendrick's death, The lawsuits had gotten nowhere, and the second official investigation was still dragging on. According to homicide detective Mitch Cradle, who assisted with the investigation, there were a lot of issues with the case. As we mentioned in the previous episode, Kendrick's organs went missing after the original autopsy.

That, combined with the faulty surveillance footage, meant there was a severe lack of physical. evidence. And most importantly, they didn't have any proof that directly connected one of their suspects to the scene of the crime. Sensing they wouldn't have a strong murder case to bring to court, the team changed tactics. Instead, they focused on charging Scott Clark with obstruction of justice. It turned out that Scott was interviewing witnesses, but Scott was not a member of the investigation. Detective Cradle said almost every person he spoke to had been contacted by Scott.

One witness even said Scott came to her work multiple times. Some were threatened by his presence. A few even believed they were being followed. It's revelations like this that make it easy to see why the Johnsons believed something sinister was going on. So they were relieved when the authorities took the accusations against Scott seriously. In the early morning hours of July, 2015, more than a dozen U.S. marshals showed up outside of Scott's home. Armed agents flooded the house, seizing his phones and computers.

The raid seemed to mark a turning point in the case, but even as investigators searched through the electronics they seized, they got another shock. On November 23rd, two years into the second investigation, Matthew Moore suddenly resigned. He wouldn't comment on why, other than to say he was taking a private sector job in Atlanta. In his absence, the case went to another U.S. attorney, Stephen Dettelbach, but Dettelbach served in the northern district of Ohio, not in Georgia, states away. For the Johnson family, it was another crushing blow. They didn't understand why the case wasn't given to Moore's successor in Georgia, and they claimed that Matthew Moore didn't just leave because he got a new job.

They were convinced he was forced out because he got too close to the truth. Two months later, their suspicions were reignited after Dettelbach suddenly resigned too. He left to work at a private law firm, just like more. The investigation remained open under Dettlebach's successor in Ohio, Michael Tobin, but for the Johnson family, it seemed like their nightmare would never end. After almost three years, they still didn't know what happened to Kendrick. They felt like they were being stopped at every turn, and instead of helping them get justice, the system was standing in their way.

All they wanted was for the second investigation, to come to an end, but when it finally did, nobody felt like celebrating. Hi, I'm Jim Clementi, retired FBI profiler. And I'm Kathy Canning-Mello, retired FBI profiler. And we are the co-hosts of Real Crime Profile. Kathy and I work together, profiling cases for the FBI for more than a decade. Yes, and if you're looking for, insightful and informed, deep analysis of open and closed crimes, you've come to the right place. Yeah, we don't just do the skim over like they do on the news. So please listen to Real Crime Profile, anywhere you listen to podcasts, and Unidentified the app.

By 2016, three years after Kendrick Johnson's death, the case had become a complicated tangled of investigations, legal battles, and conspiracies. It's a lot to keep track of, so here's a recap. The second investigation began in Valdosta, Georgia in October of 2013. Three years later, it was still open, but was now being handled by the Justice Department in the Northern District of Ohio. Meanwhile, the Johnson family had filed two outstanding lawsuits. One was a wrongful death suit aimed at the Lowndes County Board of Education. The second was a $100 million civil lawsuit that accused 38 people of covering up a homicide. That one had to be filed in a neighboring county because the local judges recused themselves. However, by March

2016, the family had voluntarily dismissed both suits, but they kept the right to refile them in the future. We don't know entirely why they did. this, but maybe they wanted to regroup and try again later. The Clark family also had some ongoing suits. First was a defamation case against Ebony Magazine, and second was a counter suit to the Johnson's $100 million civil suit. They claimed the Johnson family had disparaged them without evidence. Both suits were still making their way through the courts with no real end in sight. And all the legal back and forth distracted from the crux of the matter. finding out what happened to Kendrick Johnson.

By the summer of 2016, the second investigation finally came to an end. Kendrick's parents, Kenneth and Jackie, met with officials from the Department of Justice in June. According to Kenneth, the Department of Justice officials told him they had deep suspicions about how the case was handled. He claimed they said the Adidas shoe found near Kendrick's body, the clean shoe. sitting on a pool of blood was planted. But they couldn't prove who planted it. The DOJ's official conclusion was that while Kendrick didn't die in an accident, there wasn't enough evidence to charge anyone with a crime.

The Johnson family was heartbroken yet again. And the saga wasn't over yet. Soon after the case closed, Scott Clark resigned from the FBI. Kenneth Johnson said Scott wasn't simply quitting his job. According to him, DOJ officials revealed they had evidence that Scott had engaged in some kind of corruption. Rather than arrest him or fire him, they pressured him to resign.

It's important to note that Kenneth has no direct evidence to support his claims and the DOJ hasn't commented on his statements. But before long, Kenneth and his family had bigger things to worry about. In 2017, the Johnsons were dealt another crushing blow. Even though they had dismissed their $100 million lawsuit alleging a cover-up, a Georgia judge ordered the family to pay nearly $300,000 in legal fees to the defendants. The judge said the family had no evidence for their. claim in the first place. Meanwhile, the Clark family reached a $500,000 settlement with Ebony Magazine

for their defamation suit. But even with their loss in court, the Johnson family refused to give up. In 2018, they exhumed Kendrick's body and performed a third autopsy. This time, the pathologists uncovered even more evidence that Kendrick died of blunt forced trauma, The first autopsy, which had guided the initial investigation, determined he died of accidental asphyxia. Now, two other autopsies contradicted it. The family sent the latest autopsy report to local officials, but after two separate investigations, no one was willing to reopen the case. The Johnsons were left seeking justice for two more years until 2020, when the Blacks'

Lives Matter protests mobilized millions across the United States. In response, politicians re-examined claims of racial prejudice and police misconduct. Kendrick Johnson returned to the headlines, and a change.org petition calling to reopen the case got a staggering 1.7 million signatures. All the public pressure led to what the Johnson family had been praying for. another investigation. On March 10th, 2021, the new Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Polk reopened the case. He even offered a $500,000 reward out of his own pocket for information leading to a murder conviction.

The Justice Department sent the sheriff 17 boxes of evidence they had collected during their inquiry. Meanwhile, a group of filmmakers created a documentary on the case. case to raise awareness. Released in 2021, entitled Finding Kendrick Johnson, the film uncovered some shocking information, and the biggest bombshell was based on an FBI report about Lowndes High School's surveillance system. After pouring over it, the filmmakers discovered something that had apparently been overlooked, something with the potential to change.

everything. Throughout multiple investigations, William and Sean Clark maintained they never saw Kendrick on the day of his death. Their testimony also placed William on a bus headed to a wrestling tournament at the time Kendrick disappeared around 109 p.m. that day. But according to the FBI report, William can be seen in surveillance footage on campus, At the time Kendrick went missing, it seemed he missed the bus. Not only that, but there was also clear footage of William walking by Kendrick at 9.56 a.m. that day. The FBI took a full-color screenshot of the frame and labeled it, confirming that they knew

William and Kendrick were in the same room as each other. The fact that the FBI had evidence that contrans, predicted what the brothers and their father had said was damning, especially because it seemed like the Bureau never did anything about it. Given Scott's work as an FBI agent, this only fueled more theories about a cover-up. Unfortunately, the revelations about the surveillance video didn't do much. In January, 2022, the third investigation was officially closed.

Sheriff Pauch didn't end up filing any charges in connection with Kendrick's death. He released a statement saying in part, there was no homicide, no cover-up, no conspiracy. It was simply a tragic and bizarre accident. For the Johnson family, this was just the latest in a long list of disappointing rulings. It's not clear what the future holds for the Kendrick Johnson case. At the moment, there aren't any plans for another investigation, but after more than 10 years of advocacy, it doesn't seem like the Johnson family is going to give up anytime soon. They continue to do everything they can to find new evidence and keep pressure on investigators.

We can only hope that someday soon they'll find answers and the justice they've been looking for. If you have any information about the case or want to get involved, the Johnsons have established the Kendrick Johnson Foundation. Their mission is to ensure that Kendrick's life and story are never forgotten. I don't know that, but they strive to support other families facing similar tragedies, advocate for policy changes, and promote greater transparency and fairness in death investigations. You can learn more at Justice for Kendrick Johnson17.org.

Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories. Come back next week for the story of a new murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a crime house original powered by Pave, here at Crimehouse, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your murder,

true crime stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad-free, and instead of having to wait for each episode of a two-part series, you'll get access to both at once, plus exciting bonus content. We'll be back on Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertsovsky, Lori Maranelli, Sarah Camp, Tara Wells, Molly Quinlan, Artwick, Honeya Ah, Saeed, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening. Looking for your next crimehouse, listen, don't miss clues with Morgan Absher and Kalin Moore.

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